📣Announcing Interconnected 2.0

Dear Subscribers and Readers:

I have some personal and professional news to share with you.

On the personal front, I recently got engaged to my lovely fiance. We went to China last month to visit family and friends – my first time returning since the start of Covid, her first time ever. We had an amazing time eating, sightseeing, and counting electric vehicles on the streets.

On the professional side, after two-plus wonderful years at GitHub formulating and driving its global expansion strategy (among many other things), I have recently left to do my own thing. I’m incredibly grateful to the friends and mentors who led me to GitHub, and all the Hubbers who worked with me, supported my team’s work, and contributed to growing this iconic technology platform to serve all developers in every corner of the globe.

So what is this “own thing” that I’m working on? Or as my favorite fictional US president from The West Wing, Jed Bartlet, would say: “What’s Next?”

Announcing Interconnected 2.0

I will be going all-in to bet on myself and build the next evolution of Interconnected. This “Interconnected 2.0” will have two parts. 

Part I is building an investment partnership (or hedge fund) that invests in public companies that are what I call the “picks and shovels” of the interconnected global digital AI economy. By fusing my lived experiences as a tech business operator and an ex-White House staffer with a sharp geopolitical antenna, I believe we can bring a new edge to analyzing and investing in public companies that will shape the next phase of global innovation.  

Part II is a premium paid edition to this bilingual, multidisciplinary newsletter. It is an annual membership of $100 per year; we don’t have a monthly plan. I decided to do annual only, because my hope is to build long-term relationships with our most supportive subscribers. And I hope I’ve earned your trust by writing consistently for the last three years and 10 months (all for free), showing that we have staying power, we are not going anywhere, and we can deliver long lasting value. (So if you are on Substack, please ignore the “Monthly” section; unfortunately, Substack’s setting is rigid and I cannot remove it). 

Interconnected Premium includes:

💹 Quarterly investment portfolio deep dives + monthly market observations

✍️ 2 posts per week on average of the kind of analysis and commentary you have been receiving (free subscribers will receive 1 post per week on average)

💻 A private Zoom scheduler link to have live 1-on-1 idea discussions (e.g. stock ideas, policy questions, new projects, general brainstorming)

😎 Early access to my new future projects, e.g. book, investment deals, etc.

I have published a few premium posts:

• Our Q3 2023 investment and portfolio deep dive, where we shared our performance and strategy details

• A commentary on the three top second-order effects of the recently expanded US ban on AI chips export to China

• My likes and dislikes of the White House AI executive order

• How a high interest rate environment could impact the pace of AI budget spending in 2024

Some of you have already discovered them and signed up to be premium members (thank you!). You can get these two posts and future premium content now with Interconnected Premium Annual 👇

To those dear readers who have pledged your support on Substack, I have turned on your pledge, and whichever pledged price you offered will be grandfathered in forever. I cannot express how grateful I am of your early signal of support, which gave me the confidence to evolve this newsletter further. Thank you!

Zooming out, this career move (if you can even call it that) probably looks quite foolish. Having worked in the center of US politics during the first phase of my professional life, then making a hard switch to developer-focused infrastructure tech companies (via law school), I am lucky to have had these great opportunities and should just keep going. Instead, I decided to start over again by jumping fully into investing and finance, learning things from scratch, and making all kinds of rookie mistakes along the way.

But the thing is…I love writing, because it helps me make sense of things. I love investing, because it gives me a stake and “skin in the game” in those things I’m making sense of. Many legendary investors from Warren Buffett to Li Lu have said investing is like investigative journalism, so writing and investing are intertwined and complementary activities. And, most importantly, I just love the journey of continuing to get better and better in both, so I know I will have the persistence to keep going, when things inevitably get tough. 

Channeling my entrepreneurial superpower and inner Jensen Huang, “How hard can it be?”

Thank you for your support. And thank you for being on this journey with me.