Trung Phan
@TrungTPhan
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Write on business with @workweekinc . Co-host @niapodcast . Building an AI research app:
My Saturday newsletter ➡️
Joined December 2017
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In 1998, Bill Gates had 2B shares of MSFT when it was world’s most valuable firm.
If he held, Gates ($806B) would be wealthier than the top 4 richest people combined. Instead, Buffett advised him to give most away and Gates is now only worth $150B.
LESSON: Never ask for advice.
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Christoper Nolan hates CGI and prefers to use practical effects for insane shots.
Here are 5 gems.
1/ INTERSTELLAR: Nolan spent $100k to plant 500 real acres of corn in Alberta. After filming, he sold the crop for profit.
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There's a "Museum of Failure" in Sweden which highlights 150+ failed products. It's meant to show that innovation requires risk-taking and failure.
Here are 10 gems you may not remember:
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For anyone threatening to leave Twitter, good luck trying to find this fire content on any other platform
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Buenos Aires celebration packed with ~5m people. The Argentina team bus couldn’t drive through, so they had to call in helicopters 🤯
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Time it took to get 100 million users:
Netflix: 10 years
Gmail: 5 years
Twitter: 5 years
Facebook: 4.5 years
WhatsApp: 3.5 years
Instagram: 2.5 years
TikTok: 9 months
ChatGPT: 2 months
Pirate Bay: 1 day after Netflix cancelled shared passwords and Gen-Z discovered torrents.
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Never forget Tim Meadows as OJ Simpson writing “I did it” on the NFL telestrater (one of the best SNL opens). This was shortly after the verdict.
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tbh, Tolberone shrinkflation is wild
Fewer Doritos in your bag.
Fewer Oreos in your box.
Less toilet paper on your roll.
You aren’t imagining it—big corporations really are making you pay the same amount (sometimes more) for less. It’s called “shrinkflation,” and we’ve got to crack down on it.
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Read a great Reddit thread putting historical dates in perspective.
Here are 8 gems.
1/ The moon landing was only 66 years after the Wright Brothers first flight (1903-1969). Within a lifetime, humans went from having limited flight tech to travelling ~239k miles from Earth.
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Tracy Chapman — who hasn’t performed live in years — just sang “Fast Car” on stage with Luke Combs at the Grammy’s.
The backstory behind this collaboration is incredible.
Combs’ first favourite song ever was “Fast Car”. He covered it in early 2023 as a country version and the…
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Word count NYT's puff piece on SBF:
"Fraud": 0
"Enron": 0
"Crime": 0
"Illiquid": 0
"Stolen": 0
"Hidden": 0
"Criminal": 0
"Back door": 0
"He's getting sleep": 1
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A 16-year old won Blender’s animator of the year with this video on a futuristic street food market. Gold.
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Never forget the time Myth-busters proved that a car with golf dimples had less drag and drove faster than without
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The best part in movies is when the actor casually walks away from something they just blew up
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Japan Twitter is lit: “a conveyor belt sushi restaurant where the audience also rotates”
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Every uncle in America today to their 20-year old nephew after they help download Peacock app to watch NFL Playoffs
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Huy Fong's Sriracha hit revenue of $150m+ a year...with no sales team, no trademark and $0 in ad spend.
Its creator is Vietnamese-American David Tran, making the sauce's success a tale of immigrant hustle and a product that literally sells itself.
Here's the story🧵
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Time Warner is renaming its streaming service HBO Max to Max.
It’s a good move. The “HBO” brand is associated with some of the worst content ever: Sopranos, The Wire, Band of Brothers, Game of Thrones, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Veep, Deadwood and Silicon Valley.
Good riddance.
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This is officially the wildest Linkedin work history in the history of work histories
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In 1958, Warren Buffett bought this house in Omaha for $32k which he still owns (it’s now worth $650k).
If he instead slept on Charlie Munger’s couch and invested those funds into Berkshire Hathaway, it would be worth $1.2B.
Lesson: Don’t buy real estate.
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Been parked outside of Wendy’s for the past 6 hours trying to time the perfect entry price for a Big Bacon Classic ($1.20 to $1.60)
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While Mark Zuckerberg was in high school, his dad offered him 1 of 2 options:
◻️Tuition for a Harvard degree
◻️Funds for a McDonald’s franchise
He did neither and dropped out of Harvard to run Facebook. This year, his net worth has fallen $71B.
LESSON: Listen to your parents
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Costco has a “100% satisfaction guarantee” return policy with no expiration and people love putting it to the test.
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When Iron Man came out in 2008, Robert Downey Jr. was *not* a marquee star.
He was rebuilding his career and paid a below market rate of $500k.
But the deal terms set him up for one of the great acting comebacks ever (while earnings $450m+ as Tony Stark).
Here’s the story 🧵
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In 2004, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos met for a meal to discuss space.
It was one of their few in-person interactions.
That conversation perfectly captures the different approaches they've taken to space (and why SpaceX has pulled ahead of Blue Origin).
Here's the story 🧵
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This looks incredible via MidJourney 6.
Netflix’s “Lenin” starring Leonardo DiCaprio.
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4/ TENET
Watched the film twice. Have no idea what the plot is, but mad respect for Nolan crashing a real 747 into an airport hangar.
Turns out it was cheaper to buy a 747 and crash it vs. doing CGI.
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“Vietnamese-American parent TikTok” is my new favourite genre of TikTok
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Thought SBF speaking at NYT was absurd.
But then I saw the rest of the panel.
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The Costco hot dog combo is a legendary meme.
But how does it still only cost $1.50? Introduced in 1985, the price of that combo should be ~$4.20 if adjusted for inflation.
Thankfully, the $216B warehouse retailer has done everything in its power to keep the price down.
And…
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Lifetime franchise revenue:
Hello Kitty: $89 billion
James Bond $75 billion
Spider-Man (combined)
Marvel Cinematic U
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The foundation under Venice is fascinating.
There is the equivalent of 10 million tree trunks under the Italian city.
At first glance, wood is an inferior option to stronger materials.
But it has proven resilient since 5th century AD, when the wood was first gathered from from…
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When a startup claims it has “AI” or “ML” and then you take a look at the actual tech
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The FTX story just gets wilder.
Earlier this year, SBF invested $11.5m in Farmington State Bank in Washington St. (nearly double the bank’s value).
It’s the 26th smallest bank in the US. It serves a town of 146 people. Has only 3 employees. And looks like my parent’s garage.
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2/ INCEPTION
You know that spinning hallway where Joseph-Gordon Levitt is fighting some bad guys.
Yeah, Nolan built a giant rotating centrifuge and put a hallway in it along with ridiculously expensive cameras.
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Been looking at the most expensive real-life film stunts ever.
Here are 9 wild ones.
1. MATRIX RELOADED (2003)
For this chase sequence, a fake highway was built at a dis-used naval base in California. The 1.3 mile loop highway cost $2.5m and was fenced by a 19ft wall.
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Time it took to get 100 million users:
Netflix: 10 years
Gmail: 5 years
Twitter: 5 years
FB: 4.5 years
WhatsApp: 3.5 years
IG: 2.5 years
TikTok: 9 months
ChatGPT: 2 months
Random Pirated Reddit Livestream for Chiefs vs. Dolphins instead of paying for Peacock: 7 minutes
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Will Ferrell’s blooper outtake from “Eastbound & Down” is up there with hardest acting challenges ever.
Danny McBride and Craig Robinson use every bit of willpower to not laugh as Ferrell tries to break them.
Robinson told Vulture about the experience:
➡️ “I remember standing…
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Tiger Woods after turning down $800m from Liv Golf so he can protect his PGA legacy…watching Liv Golf buy out the comically hypocritical PGA.
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NBA superstar Joel Embiid taught himself to shoot by watching YouTube vids. His explanation is amazing.
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This is John Lyke, who has a very cool niche.
He went to film school and was a pro rollerblader & snowboarder.
This venn diagram of skills makes him an expert “blade camera operator”, a job that involves filming with a $100k camera while on roller blades.
You may have caught…
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A Netflix user will browse the app for 90 seconds and leave if they find nothing.
Thumbnail artwork is actually NFLX's most effective lever to influence a viewer's choice. A user will look at one for only 1.8 seconds, so NFLX spends huge to optimize them.
Here's a breakdown🧵
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IKEA is the world's largest furniture brand. With annual sales hitting ~$50B+, it's the King of "buy stuff you never planned to buy".
Unsurprisingly, IKEA designs its stores with various psychological tricks to get you to spend more money.
Here's are 12 of them 🧵
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Spray-on Condom (2006-2008)
Step 1: Insert junk into spray apparatus
Step 2: Spray on melted latex
Step 3: Wait 3 minutes for it to dry
Step 4: This is the most insane thing ever seen in my life
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Just spent the past 12 hours backing up my Twitter.
I hand-wrote each of my 41,214 tweets individually on to cue cards and organized them in a drawer.
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Zara’s new transparent LED storefront in NY. WTF is going on? haha
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This Amazon review of 5-Hour Energy put me into literal tears
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Christoper Nolan famously prefers practical effects over CGI (somehow, “Oppenheimer” has no CGI).
He took the approach to the next level in “Interstellar”.
Instead of digitally recreating a corn field, Nolan spent $100,000 to plant one and sold it for a profit afterwards.
Why…
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3/ THE DARK KNIGHT
Batman flips Joker’s 18-wheeler truck.
To get the FX, a piston was put under the trailer with TNT. When the TNT blows, the piston hit the ground so hard, it flips the truck.
The only CGI used was to *remove* the piston from the shot.
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Zuck after a decade and $50B spent on a VR platform watching Tim Cook scoop him with the category-defining Apple Vision Pro.
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Janet Yellen using all her burners to vote YES on
@elonmusk
“should I sell 10% of Tesla to pay taxes” Twitter poll
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5/ THE DARK KNIGHT RISES
Nolan filmed this scene in the Scottish Highlands, and got government sign-off to drop an airplane fuselage into the mountain range.
The stunt crew was legit on the outside of the plane (jumped from a helicopter and wore parachutes).
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This “Floating Crosswalk" in Iceland was an interesting idea: painted on the street to look 3D from all angles (meant to slow down traffic).
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Reddit just filed for its IPO.
Have done zero research on the financials but intend to buy solely based on this post, which is the most astute understanding of internet discourse ever.
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Satya Nadella walking into the Microsoft Monday Morning Meeting after acquiring OpenAI for $0 and 0 regulatory scrutiny
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Red Bull sells 10 billion cans a year.
But it’s not a beverage company. It’s a marketing firm, spending 35% of sales on marketing vs. Coca-Cola (9%) and Pepsi (7%).
I wrote more here (after drinking 3 sugar-free Red Bulls):
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SCOOP: Apple shuts down its Electric Vehicle project after 10 years because its proposed charging mechanism proved unworkable.
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“Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.”
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Why does Red Bull own an F1 team?
Because the company — which sells $7B+ of energy drinks a year — is a pure marketing firm (outsources all production).
Its invested $2B+ into F1 but has gained multiples of that for the brand by "manufacturing history".
Here’s a breakdown🧵
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“Cha" and "te" are both Chinese words for tea. If a territory came into contact with the drink by:
• The Silk Road = "cha"
• Sea shipping routes (starting with Dutch traders) = "tea"
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Lighting the 1992 Olympic flame with an arrow shot is the most baller thing I’ve ever seen
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Went down a rabbit hole for cross-industry innovations (when one industry borrows from another).
Here are 8 gems.
1. James Dyson made a bagless vacuum after seeing how sawmills used cyclone force to eject sawdust.
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Up to the 1990s, raw salmon sushi was not eaten in Japan.
What changed? Norway went on a 10-year marketing campaign to sell Atlantic salmon in the East Asian country. And the plan worked.
Here’s a story 🧵
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South Korea put pedestrian street lights on the ground cause so many pedestrians were staring at phones.
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Metal drummer Dick Verbeuren hears “Mr. Brightside” for the first time (but without the drums).
After one listen-through, he writes down the song’s structure by counting the bars and naming the parts.
Then crushes his own great version. Very cool to see his creative process.
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F1 drivers can experience 5Gs while decelerating into a turn, equivalent to 20KG of force on the neck. So, their neck strength training is next level (see Max Verstappen).
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Huy Fong's Sriracha hit revenue of $150m+ a year...with no sales team, no trademark and $0 in ad spend.
Its creator is Vietnamese-American David Tran, making the sauce's success a tale of immigrant hustle and a product that literally sells itself.
Here's the story🧵
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If
@elonmusk
had just left his $160 million Paypal payout in $PYPL...it would be worth $21 billion today (133x gain).
Instead, he bet literally every penny on:
• creating the 1st mass-manufacturing car company in the US in a century
• go to Mars
What a f**king legend.
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Travelling solo: $150
Travelling with wife and kid: $15,000
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ASML is the most important company you've never heard of.
The $220B Dutch firm makes the machines that make semiconductors. Each one costs $150m and access to them are a huge geopolitical flashpoint.
Here's a breakdown 🧵
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6/ OPPENHEIMER
Nolan’s newest movie (July 2023) is about the Manhattan Project and the making of the atom bomb.
The film apparently recreates a nuclear bomb with practical effects, which is objectively insane (but obviously very cool).
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