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Midweek greetings to all, as we unveil the 281st chapter of Weekly Olio—a delightful concoction of laughter, insight, and a sprinkle of mystery. Within these pages, you'll discover a handpicked selection of fascinating finds from the vast realms of the internet.
Keep your eyes peeled for this week’s Publisher’s Parmesan, arriving this Sunday!
A word from our Sponsors…
The Next Breakout Might Be in Your Pocket
Everyone’s hunting for the next Unicorn.
The type of “category disruptor” that grows fast and turns early believers into big winners.
59,000+ investors think that Mode Mobile could be one of those rare finds.
Americans spend 4 ½ hours on their phones daily, and Mode Mobile is monetizing that screentime. With $1B+ earned by over 490M customers and 32,481% revenue growth, Mode’s EarnPhone is turning smartphones into income generating assets.
Their previous raises sold out, and the company is now offering pre-IPO shares at $0.52/share with up to 20% bonus, exclusive to early investors.
Being early is everything, and this window is still open.
*Please read the offering circular and related risks at invest.modemobile.com.
Mode Mobile recently received their ticker reservation with Nasdaq ($MODE), indicating an intent to IPO in the next 24 months. An intent to IPO is no guarantee that an actual IPO will occur.
The Deloitte rankings are based on submitted applications and public company database research, with winners selected based on their fiscal-year revenue growth percentage over a three-year period.
The Quote 💭
“The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.”
The Tweet 🐦
Sahil Bloom describes a friend’s midlife crisis—jealousy of younger colleagues’ freedom and FOMO from social media—as driven by fear of closed doors and lost time.Bloom instead experiences a “Reverse Midlife Crisis.” Rather than chasing past thrills (cars, status, novelty) to impress his younger self, he focuses on presence and future compounding: deep relationships, health, calm, meaningful routines, and investing time wisely.Key pillars: subtract what doesn’t matter; invest time (don’t just spend it); be present in the current season instead of chasing spring. He urges making your older self proud.
The Infographic 💹
China's second quarter gross domestic product growth was 4.3%, which was down from 5% the previous quarter.The slowdown was due in large part to an accelerating slide in investments. Urban fixed-asset investment (which has been a major driver of economic growth in China that includes big items like real estate development and infrastructure projects) plunged 5.7% in the first 6 months compared with the prior year. This is the third straight month and 7 out of the last 9 that year-on-year fixed-asset investment has declined. Chart sourced from Fidelity Investments.
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The Short Read 📝
How China’s Venture Ecosystem Works - by Bohan
After visiting tier-1 Chinese investors and robotics/biotech firms, the author notes Silicon Valley fears of Chinese dominance in open-source AI, biotech (many novel trials and licensed drugs), and robotics (data scale + rapid hardware iteration). Yet Chinese founders and VCs still look to the Valley for ideas and closely track Western updates.
Chinese capital is harsher: founders often face debt-like equity terms with personal liability and forced IPOs (little M&A market exists). Three capital pools exist—government-linked RMB funds (most restrictive, strategically directed), local USD funds (more founder-friendly), and scarce foreign capital. Financial Advisors (FAs) broker many deals. Business runs on guanxi (warm intros only; no cold outreach). The state heavily shapes priorities via industrial policy, funding, and incentives, fostering ambitious, high-stakes execution but also pressure and occasional froth. Chinese markets can list earlier-stage companies than the US. Read more…
The Long Read 📜
In Conversation with Nikesh Arora - by Timeless
Rejected from 400 jobs after business school, Nikesh Arora kept the letters — including one the printer ran out of ink on. He got in at Fidelity on his tenth application there, and by his own telling, only because their HR system couldn't see the nine rejections. He went on to run Google Europe (taking it from 26% to 48% of company revenue), advise Masayoshi Son on a paper napkin, and take the top job at Palo Alto Networks knowing, as he cheerfully admits, nothing about cybersecurity.
What makes this one worth your time is the anti-mythology. "I don't have anything bizarre; maybe that's why I have limited success," he says of his childhood. No prodigy arc, no origin obsession — just a proficient operator who thinks risk should scale to ambition, that M&A is a tool and never a strategy, and that his real job after buying a company is stopping his own teams from slowing the founder down.The best bit: asked what Palo Alto needs to still be on top in 100 years, he rejects the question. Nobody survives a century in the same business. Culture survives. Nimbleness survives. Everything else is ducking and weaving between technological inflection points — and AI is the one currently keeping him up at night. Read more…
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We’ll be back in your inbox 2 PM IST next Wednesday. Till then, have a productive week!
Disclaimer: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the text belong solely to the author, and not necessarily to the author's employer, organization, committee or other group or individual.