Here's my conversation with @ToddGraves, founder and CEO of @RaisingCanes. 0:00 The Entrepreneurial Mindset: Sleep and Business Obsession 2:13 The Birth of Raising Cane's: Overcoming Skepticism 3:29 Inspiration from In-N-Out Burger 7:17 The Importance of Quality and Focus 14:49 The Journey to Success: Hard Work and Sacrifice 19:21 The Early Days: Building Raising Cane's from Scratch 21:23 Financing the Dream: Unconventional Paths 32:28 The Relentless Pursuit of Success 33:02 Commitment and Oaths: The Camping Trip 34:02 Fanaticism and Relentless Focus 34:53 Learning from Others and Continuous Improvement 35:06 The Never-Satisfied Mindset 36:04 The Importance of Founders in Business 39:55 The Purpose Beyond Profit 51:52 Financing the Dream: Credit Cards and SBA Loans 55:47 Building the First Restaurant 57:56 Expanding the Vision 58:59 Positive Motivational Management 1:00:51 Creating a Coaching Culture 1:01:42 Intrinsic Motivation vs. Titles 1:02:41 The Importance of Being Present 1:06:35 Respect, Recognition, and Rewards 1:09:12 The Power of Encouragement 1:18:10 The Myth of Delegation 1:22:57 Focus on What You Do Best 1:30:07 Dining at Giro in Tokyo 1:30:59 The Franchise Model Debate 1:32:50 Challenges of Franchising 1:35:21 Building a Business Authentic to You 1:37:07 Financing and Expansion Strategies 1:49:13 Surviving Hurricane Katrina 1:55:48 Lessons from Estee Lauder 1:58:06 Final Thoughts and Reflections Includes paid partnerships.

Thanks. Is this a fixed 35%? Can I just divide their revenues by 35% to make it apple to apple? Sorry, I haven’t studied the biz, so don’t know about the nuances here

Xpeng's presentation was pretty nuts; CEO He Xiaopeng claims his FSD has a lower intervention rate than Tesla's and has been developed more quickly (they also copied the UI, as you can see below) More notes: - Xpeng will license its FSD globally (they call it "open source" but really it's licensing) - They report training used "30,000 cards" (are these H100s before the ban, or H20s?) — note Tesla has 120,000 H100 equivalents - Volkswagen is their first FSD licensing partner; they showed a video of German passengers interacting with the car's computer using German language commands - Their goal is for global deployment of their FSD - They announced an SDK for partners to integrate their Robotaxi technology - Will launch THREE Robotaxi models in 2026 - Will start mass-producing humanoid robots in 2026 as well; they are gendered as there are male and female-looking models - Iron robot (as it's called) has a hand with 22 degrees of freedom (close to a human's 27 DOF) - The robot will have a solid state battery - Xiaopeng cited Asimov's three laws of robotics, then added a fourth: the robot cannot disclose anything about you, and must preserve your privacy (However I wonder: what about the CCP? It will certainly not follow Xiaopeng's Fourth Law)

An incredible leap and toe-tap by receiver Omar Cooper Jr. keeps the Indiana Hoosiers undefeated and rolling. Columnist @JasonGay on what makes it the college football play of the year (so far). wsj.com/sports/football/indi…

With all the Sequoia leadership change coverage, learned that Alfred Lin’s Chinese name is 林君叡 (Lin2 Jun1 Rui4) where 叡 the third character is just an archaic / alternate way of writing 睿, which means wise (also my name!). Jun is lord. So “wise lord” indeed!

The best psychological trick I can share about navigating market drawdowns is to look at them as your favorite assets are going on sale, rather than look at as if your current portfolio is losing value. This is especially true for young people with very long time horizons. Offense vs defense. Perspective matters.

OpenAI estimates that the first $1T invested in AI infrastructure could increase GDP by >5% over three years, per its internal analysis.

Why I love recurring revenue:

The demand for cold-storage crypto wallets is soaring, as hardware wallet maker Ledger reports its best year, with "triple-digit millions" in 2025 YTD revenue (@nikasgari / Financial Times) ft.com/content/098d43f1-4889… techmeme.com/251109/p9#a2511… 📫 Subscribe: techmeme.com/newsletter?from…

We have allowed foreign actors with bad intentions to rewrite American history. 🇺🇸 These true ideas needs to recapture the virus that has infected every "Mideast Studie" Dept with every Qatar dollar that has hired ideologies and hateful. And every US K-12 History curricula🚨👇

Bowman's children aren't even in the public school system. They are in Riverdale Country School, which charges between $57k-$62k/year in tuition.

Anyone surprised?

once you make your first $1 on the internet, it completely rewires your brain few things feel better than watching an idea in your head become something real in the world.

Moderating Muslim country after country will join Abraham Accords––will take time, but arc of history is towards civility, coexistence, community, BUILDING + yes capitalism––the only system that lifts people out of poverty📈 Idealogues, Islamists, Dividers, Destroyers be gone📉

Radical open-mindedness and radical transparency are invaluable for rapid learning and effective change. Learning is the product of a continuous real-time feedback loop in which we make decisions, see their outcomes, and improve our understanding of reality as a result. Being radically open-minded enhances the efficiency of those feedback loops, because it makes what you are doing, and why, so clear to yourself and others that there can’t be any misunderstandings. The more open-minded you are, the less likely you are to deceive yourself— and the more likely it is that others will give you honest feedback. If they are “believable” people (and it’s very important to know who is “believable”), you will learn a lot from them. #principleoftheday

❤️🇺🇸🇦🇪🇮🇱📈 💪

China suspends export restrictions for a year on five critical minerals to the US, including gallium and germanium, used to make certain types of semiconductors (@keithbradsher / New York Times) nytimes.com/2025/11/09/busin… techmeme.com/251109/p7#a2511…

Reporter: VP Vance called the court order absurd. Shapiro: He rose to some prominence by writing a book about growing up in Appalachia, where there are a whole lot of people who get SNAP. He made millions of dollars off telling their stories, and then he turned his damn back on those very people he likes to write about and claim as his own. And you’ll excuse me for getting emotional about it, but when I see people in my state who are hungry because of Vance’s bullshit politics, that makes me angry. That’s why I went to court, and that’s why we’re putting dollars on people’s SNAP cards—because that’s what the people of Pennsylvania deserve. And America deserves better than J.D. Vance.

A look at Apple's plans to enhance satellite connectivity in its products, Siri's Gemini upgrade, new 2026 Macs, a Health+ service, and the future of Fitness+ (@markgurman / Bloomberg) bloomberg.com/news/newslette… techmeme.com/251109/p8#a2511… 📫 Subscribe: techmeme.com/newsletter?from…

.@Tesla_AI should fully integrate Grok with the car; all of these edge cases should be conversational and natural. "Hey Grok, pull over."