Per My Last E-mail #4
Natively Integrated Companies, Exhalation, and Optical Illusions
Hi Friends š,
Hope youāve had a better week than the Warriors. Weāre back on the Sunday cadence, and Iām hoping to stick to this going forward.
Puja and I have been up since 5:30am watching India play Australia in the Cricket World Cup, and itās looking good for India with 352 runs in their overs. Only 2-3 hours to go! Ā
Natively Integrated Companies

As the capstone for my writing class, I wrote a 3-part series on The Rise of the Natively Integrated Company. In it, I explore the shift from businesses that focused on controlling supply, to those that focus on controlling demand, and ultimately, to Natively Integrated Companies: companies that combine the focus on building quality products that old-school businesses had with the focus on owning relationships with customers that companies like Airbnb, Zillow, and Netflix do.
I spoke on a real estate tech panel at Blackstone a few months ago. In response to one of the questions about how our businesses could become asset light, I replied that Breather was actually pretty heavy - we lease space, have in-house design and construction teams, manage our own operations, build our own tech, and build direct relationships with our customers via phenomenal customer care, sales and marketing teams - and that our heaviness was the key to creating a superior, differentiated experience. Afterwards, one of our investors, who I hadnāt seen in the audience, came up to me and said āGreat job up there. But I hated your answer about being heavy.ā In a way, this series is my 8,000 word response.
This is the longest piece I have written, and it reflects the experience Iāve gained at Breather and lessons Iāve learned following other startups closely. I hope youāll check it out, let me know what you learned, let me know what you disagree with, and if you like it, share it with people who would enjoy it.
šØ Athens Airbnb Update šØ
Our house in Athens is live on Airbnb! But Puja told me that I canāt post a link because low conversion rates will hurt our search ranking. If you want to see the house and PROMISE youāll book, Iāll send you the link.
Tweet of the Week

I get it. When I was a freshman in college, I took an Astronomy class expecting an easy A, and it turned out it was pretty hard and there was physics involved etc. So I can sympathize with our Presidentās confusion over whether the Moon is part of Mars.
What Iām Reading
š Writing 8,000 words on Natively Integrated Companies didnāt leave me too much time to read, so Iām still early on in Ā Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein.
š¤ Iām also giving Audible a spin and listening to Exhalation: Stories by Ted Chiang. The book is a series of science fiction short stories that Meghan recommended to me. The author Alan Moore describes Exhalation better than I can:
āAs much thought experiments as stories, Ted Chiangās exquisite mechanisms employ science fiction as an instrument to probe the human condition. Like the chronicler of Exhalationās title narrative, he opens the back of his own head and lays bare its mysterious golden motion for the hushed appreciation of an awestruck audience. Beautifully written and conceived, this is a marvelous, astonishing collection that we would do well to read before the worlds it conjures are upon us. Urgently recommended.ā
I highly recommend both Range and Exhalation, and each in the format that Iām consuming them: read Range and listen to Exhalation.
Links and Listens
š Uberās Path of Destruction in American Affairs Journal
Mike Madonna sent me this brutal takedown of almost every aspect of Uberās business by American Affairs writer Hubert Horan. I have read a lot of the negative press on Uber, and have even written about the challenges of their business model in my Shen Yun and Why There Wonāt Be Any New Aggregators posts, but Iāve never read anything so convincing from the anti-Uber camp.
Horan essentially argues that Uber is one of the greatest examples of Greater Fool Theory - aka āI donāt need to think that this business will actually make money to buy the stock as long as there is some greater fool who will buy it from me at a higher price laterā - and that they have optimized for āgrowth at all costsā from the beginning. Growth means more investment which means more subsidies which means more riders which means more growth which means more investment which means that Uber has been able to put off dealing with the fundamental underlying challenges that come with running a transportation business.
Horan thinks that Uber has been a net negative and that regulated taxi businesses werenāt as dumb as they looked. If youāre interested at all in Uberās story or startup economics, this long-ish article is worth the time.
š Data, Decisions and Basketball with Sam Hinkie on Invest Like the Best
This replay of an interview Patrick OāShaughnessy did with former Sixers General Manager Sam Hinkie a little over a year ago popped into my feed again this week. If you havenāt listened to Hinkie speak before, or read his resignation letter, itās surprising to hear an NBA GM speak so fluently about markets, machine learning, books, hiring, and innovation. One of my dreams is to work with Sam Hinkie one day, and this podcast is a good example of why that is.
šš¼ The Heart of a Swimmer vs. The Heart of a Runner in The New York Times
Once upon a time, I was a good runner and I have always been a terrible swimmer. I was hoping that this Times article would tell me that as a runner, I have the heart of a champion. It didnāt. What it said instead is, āWhile all of the athletesā left ventricles filled with blood earlier than average and untwisted more quickly during each heartbeat, those desirable changes were amplified in the runners.ā Iāll take it.
š° 50 Things Iāve Learned in the First 90 Days of Running a Company by Romeen Sheth
Romeen Sheth just finished his first 90 days running Metasys, and he shares 50 things that he learned and brought to the job. My three favorites are:
You donāt have to rely on yourself to develop instincts
Curiosity is the best predictor of performance
Start with imagination, end with logic
Bonus: I realized at the end that Romeen is a Duke alum. Knew I liked that guy.
š An Optical Illusion that Will ZigZag Your Brain in SyFy Wire

Optical illusions are always fun, and this article on one even asks about aliens, āHow will the stochastic constructions of their own brains (assuming they even have brains like we do) separate them from us in ways we cannot even fathom?ā
Whatās Next
This week, Iām working on the Loonshots course and starting some follow-up posts on Natively Integrated Companies. If you have feedback or topics you would like to see me dig into, you know where to find me.
Thanks for reading. If you know anyone who would be interested in receiving this weekly e-mail, please forward away! And they can always subscribe here.
Best,
Packy