"Age of Miracles"

"Age of Miracles"

By Packy McCormick | TurpentineSociety & CultureBusinessEntrepreneurshipTechnology
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"Age of Miracles" episodes

  • Transforming Tata

    I teamed up with Mario Gabriele, the author of The Generalist, to study Tata Group, the 152-year-old Indian conglomerate with public subsidiaries worth a combined $234 billion. We cover:  

    1. Tata’s rich history, beginning with the opium trade
    2. The complexion of a messy conglomerate
    3. The necessary moves to perpetuate the dynasty

      4. Read the full post at Not Boring.

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      43 min
    4. Martha Stewart's Reign of Relevancy

      In today's Not Boring Guest Post, Ali Montag writes about the original multi-channel creator: Martha Stewart. 

      For more than five decades, Martha Stewart has evolved to stay one step ahead of the curve. Montag writes, "Martha Stewart has, over the course of a 50-year career, with mystically perfect timing, refashioned herself from Wall Street stock broker to Connecticut catering chef, from the U.S.’s first self-made woman billionaire to a yoga-teaching inmate in federal prison, from a scandal-tainted villain to renewed brand icon, and from the picture of propriety to Instagram’s latest thirst trap."

      You can read the full post at Not Boring.

      Read more of Ali's writing at the Newsletter Crew Newsletter.

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      19 min
    5. Startup Stock Option Options with Secfi

      In 2020, startup employees left $4.9 billion on the table by not exercising their pre-IPO options. Employees at Snowflake, Airbnb, and DoorDash missed out the most.

      Most of that can be fixed with a little eduction, so today, in this sponsored post, we're going to explore startup stock options:

      • How Startup Equity Works
      • Why Employees Don’t Exercise
      • Options Exercise Options
      • Meet Secfi
      • The CAC Arbitrage
      • Secfi’s Vision

        • Read the full post at Not Boring.


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        32 min
      • Bull & Bear: Agora, the API Powering Clubhouse

        This week, I teamed up with Lillian Li, the author of Chinese Characteristics, to write about Agora. I took the bull case, and Lillian took the bear case. We cover:

        • Agora’s History
        • $API’s API
        • China’s Livestreaming Boom
        • What Agora Looks Like Today
        • The Bull Case for Agora
        • The Bear Case Against Agora
        • Bull or Bear?

          • Read the full piece at Not Boring.

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          37 min
        • Is BlockFi the Future of Finance?

          The first question anyone has when they hear about BlockFi is: “What’s the catch? 8.6% APY sounds too good to be true. That can’t be legit.”

          I went DEEP to understand how they do it, and it’s legit. Essentially, BlockFi arbitrages the fact that traditional finance and crypto don’t like to deal with each other. We'll cover:


          • What Does a Bank Do?
          • What BlockFi Does
          • Stablecoins and 8.6% APY
          • Grayscale Bitcoin Trust
          • The Race to the Finance Super App
          • The Offer

            • Read the full post at Not Boring.

            Sign up for BlockFi.

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            36 min
          • Unwitting Collaboration & Web3 Experimentation

            I'm minting a Not Boring essay, Power to the Person, as an NFT, auctioning it, and splitting the proceeds with the people whose work I referenced. 

            In today's Not Boring, we discuss: 

            • Chris Dixon's canonical pieces: The next big thing will start out looking like a toy (2010) and What the smartest people do on the weekend is what everyone else will do during the week in ten years (2013)
            • A new media model that rewards quality over quantity and virality.
            • Experimenting with Web3

              • You can read the full post at Not Boring, including a link to the NFT auction. 

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              15 min
            • A Not Boring Adventure, One Year In

              Today, I'm sharing the Not Boring story as honestly as possible -- it often looks way easier from the outside -- with lessons I’ve learned on writing, growth, business models, investing, and creator psychology sprinkled in. We’ll cover:

              • Getting Here: Per My Last Email → Not Boring Club → Not Boring
              • Growth: Luck, Shares, Ups, Downs and Tommy
              • The Writing Process and Psychology
              • Business Model: Optimize for Growth and Opportunity
              • The Not Boring Syndicate
              • The Present and Future of Not Boring

                • You can read the full post, including charts and a link to the subscription vs. ad model at Not Boring.

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                38 min
              • This is How They Tell Me Secureframe Saves the World

                If you're building a software company, you need security compliance certifications like SOC 2 and ISO 27001 to sell into large companies. It sounds boring and tedious, but it's fascinating. The story involves:


                - Russian hackers unleashing malware called NotPetya on the world and causing $10 billion in damages.
                - How startups are selling into large enterprises and big pools of revenue much earlier.
                - How to compete and win in a massive, nascent, non-winner-take-all market with high switching costs.
                - Why you keep hearing about SOC 2 on Invest Like the Best and The Twenty Minute VC.

                Secureframe, founded by Shrav Mehta and Natasja Nielsen in 2020, just raised $18 million from Kleiner Perkins to make security compliance faster, cheaper, and more effective. 

                Read the full post at Not Boring

                Schedule a Demo with Secureframe

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                28 min
              • We Good Now?

                In this episode, Dror Poleg and I break down WeWork after the recent announcement that it's going public via SPAC at a $9 billion valuation. 

                We cover:

                • The Royal We. Adam Neumann was narcissistic and brash… exactly what was needed to shake up office real estate.
                • WeStory. From 3,000 sq ft in Soho to millions across the world, fueled by an epic hype flywheel.
                • From WeWork to We. Neumann pushed the company outside of office and into a little bit of everything.
                • IPOh No! WeWork’s attempted 2019 IPO failed spectacularly thanks to unforced errors, and the company brought in new management, refocused, and trimmed down.
                • WeSPAC. On Friday,Vivek Ranadivé’s BowX SPAC announced that it’s taking WeWork public at a $9 billion valuation.
                • Side Note: Masa is a Genius Again. Masa is on a tear. WeWork breaking even would be the icing on his comeback cake.
                • WeWork by the Numbers. The refocused WeWork is a straightforward business.
                • The WeWork Bear Case. This time, maybe it’s the market’s fault.
                • The WeWork Bull Case. WeWork survived, erased its mistakes, and is perfectly positioned to capture value in a more flexible world.
                • Back to the Future. You know who would have been a perfect CEO for this market?

                  Read the full piece on Not Boring.

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                  42 min
                • What's On Deck for On Deck?

                  Today, On Deck is announcing that it’s raising a $20 million Series A led by Keith Rabois at Founders Fund with participation from Learn Capital, Chamath Palihapitiya, Slack Fund, Village Global, Eric Yuan, Fred Ehrsam, Allison Picken’s The New Normal Fund, Charles Hudson at Precursor Ventures, Adam D’Angelo, Jen Rubio, Elad Gill, Julia DeWahl, Henry Ward, Afton Vechery, Jules Walter, Eric Su, Julia Lipton, Scott Belsky, Anthony Pompliano, Bloomberg Beta, Dylan Field, Aarti Ramamurthy, and many, many more members of the On Deck community.

                  We cover why On Deck has a chance to build a Stanford for the internet:

                  • On Deck Investment Thesis.
                  • Natively Integrated Education.
                  • Platform and Team Constellation.
                  • The On Deck Opportunity.

                    • You can read the full original post and subscribe at notboring.co.

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                    28 min

                  About "Age of Miracles"

                  From the publisher's feed

                  A narrative show that explores the complex industries that will play an important role in creating an abundant future for humanity. Every season, host Packy McCormick – a venture investor and writer of the popular Not Boring newsletter – brings in an expert cohost to go deep into the possibilities and challenges of making “sci-fi” dreams our reality in our lifetimes. The first season starts at the root of all progress and prosperity: unlocking 10x more clean and reliable energy by splitting and fusing atoms themselves.

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