Hey everyone,
It’s a little late to wish you a happy new year, but I hope you are having a great start to the year. And since several of you have reached out, I wanted to share that I will be continuing this newsletter for at least one more year, although there will be some changes. This letter is to share some updates on what you can expect from this newsletter for the year ahead, including new cadence, new format, and new projects. And if you read to the end, I’d love if you could answer a few questions (via poll) to share some feedback.
As always, if you have any questions or suggestions for letter subjects, feel free to reach out to me directly.
New Format
For the past two years, I’ve sent out two letters a week, on Tuesday at 2:22pm PST and Saturday at 6:06am PST (save for last January when I ended the newsletter before reviving it).
Going forward, I’ll be publishing a new letter/anthology every Monday at 9pm EST and Wednesday at 9pm EST. I’ll also be sending out a post Fridays at 9am EST. However, the Friday posts won’t be letters—at least not in the traditional sense. I’m calling it “Free Fridays” and it will comprise mostly of:
Reposted Letters: I’ll be going back into the archive and sending out old letters, starting with Letter #1.
People don’t seem to read something unless it lands directly in their inbox. This means this newsletter has a big backlog most people haven’t explored.
Even if you’ve been subscribed from the very beginning, it’s been almost 5 years (wow) since I first started this newsletter, so the content should be fresh.
Guest Essays: Essays and/or transcripts from friends of the newsletter (some of whom have been featured in letters), spanning everything from healthcare and technology to learning and education.
Many of my most thoughtful friends, from Silicon Valley to Hollywood to Wall Street, stopped writing years ago. This is my way of trying to get them to write again.
PS/ If you’d like to contribute an essay, email me.
Collaborations: Original essays written with friends of the newsletter that will be about whatever we’ve been thinking about.
For me, the point of this newsletter is and always has been to meet new people and stay in touch with old ones.
I’ve realized that working on things with friends is the best way to stay connected, and much more effective than sending updates.
PS/ If you’d like to work on an essay together, email me.
Frameworks: Essays that try to bridge the theoretical and the practical. Inspired by Charlie Munger, Michael Mauboussin, and Robert Hagstrom.
Some of these will be net new, some will be previously published (i.e., Speedwell Research Business Philosophy memos).
PS/ If you have any frameworks that you would like to share with others, email me.
Other Posts: This is a catch-all for any other kinds of content I might share, whether it be a letter, an essay, a transcript, a video, or something else.
For letters, I try to not feature the same person twice, so this could be a way of sharing more work from certain IFOs.
PS/ Email me if there are any previously featured IFOs that you’d want to see more content from. Also, I’m open to suggestions for any other types of content that might be interesting—email me if you have any ideas.
New Projects
Project #1: Friday Fives
This will be a new series (released on “Free Fridays") where I’ll share 5 pieces of content, whether they be books, booklets, novels, movies, tv shows, reference guides, or anything else, grouped for a specific reason.
As many of you know, “Kevin Gee” is a pseudonym, and in some ways, a group effort (we’re always looking for more people to work with!). Just last week, after sharing a letter on Jack McDonald and asking for any of his previous students to reach out if they’re willing to share their experience in his class, Altos Ventures’ Nick Chow reached out to me to share his experience (with the caveat that he took Jack’s class after Jack had passed).
PS/ Still working on the essay, so if you have taken Jack’s class and would be willing to share your experience in it (on background and not to be quoted is fine), please respond to this email or send me a new one at kevin@12mv2.com. Twitter DMs work too.
We ended up trading notes about some of our favorite recent reads, and discovered that we both independently have been thinking about what a “book canon” for IFOs (Investors, Founders, and Operators) would look like, and that we had many of the same topics and books in mind. So we figured we’d try tackling this together (we’ve both been putting it off), one subject at a time, five books at a time.
So for Friday Five, we’ll be sharing groups of five of our favorite content, why we grouped them together, and why we think each piece is worth further exploration. Our first edition will be a “Startup Toolkit” for founders, covering reading for finding product market fit, setting culture, selling, customer service, and hiring.
Project #2: Daily Berkshire
Daily Berkshire will be a new, separate newsletter where I share one question and answer from Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger at Berkshire’s Annual Meeting, starting from 1994.
The newsletter name is an homage to the Daily Journal, as well as refer to the fact that it will be a daily newsletter.
To be clear, the purpose of this newsletter will just be to get a daily dose of wisdom from Warren and Charlie for those of you who appreciate them, but don’t have the desire or time to seek them out to study regularly. It’ll be similar to A Letter a Day, but just focused on Warren and Charlie, chronological, and actually daily.
For those who would rather:
Read all the full transcripts and watch the recordings of Warren and Charlie answering each question, you can do so at CNBC’s archive.
Read the entire transcripts in a user friendly way, you can do so with Max Olson’s fantastic Memorex.
If you’re interested in creating something like this for one (or some) of my compilations, please email me.
Read a curated selection of Warren and Charlie’s answers, you can check out Alex Morris’ upcoming book: Buffett and Munger Unscripted.
You can subscribe to this newsletter here:
Project #3: TBD
As I mentioned earlier, the entire point of this newsletter is to meet new people, reconnect with old friends, and stay in touch with existing friends. If you belong to any of those three groups (you do), and if you have any projects that you’ve had on the backburner that you think might be fun to work on with other people, feel free to reach out! (Nick did, and we’re kicking off Friday Fives this month.)
Quick Survey
If you’ve gotten this far, I’d love if you could answer five short questions:
Wrap-up
If you’ve got any thoughts, questions, or feedback, please drop me a line - I would love to chat! You can find me on twitter at @kevg1412 or my email at kevin@12mv2.com.
If you're a fan of business or technology in general, please check out some of my other projects!
Speedwell Research — Comprehensive research on great public companies including CSU, META, CPRT, CSGP, AXON, ABNB, and interesting new frameworks like the Consumer’s Hierarchy of Preferences and the Piton Network.
Cloud Valley — Beautifully written, in-depth biographies that explore the defining moments, investments, and life decisions of investing, business, and tech legends like Dan Loeb, Bob Iger, Steve Jurvetson, and Cyan Banister.
DJY Research — Comprehensive research on publicly-traded Asian companies like Alibaba, Tencent, Nintendo, Coupang, Sea Limited (no paywall), and more.
Compilations — “An international treasure”
Memos — A selection of some of my favorite investor memos
Bookshelves — Collection of recommended booklists.
Love your content, thanks for sharing! The Letter a Day substack is probably my favorite; it’s not too long and helps me discover founders/operators I wouldn’t otherwise read about. I’m very interested on reading from less known IFO’s. The fact that you also pick up stuff from many years earlier is also quite unique and a great way to learn how people thought in the before times. Looking forward to the new content.
The other project I enjoy but rarely gets updated is Cloud Valley. I know these things take time so it’s understandble but would enjoy reading new posts.