Strategy & Administration

We now live in a creator economy with grassroots and grasstops political advocacy where swing voters are influenced with AI. For creator marketing, I like API Direct (or Meltwater if you can afford it), Airwallex, and Tax1099. For musicians, I like Sentric -> Distrokid -> Terrorbird -> AWAL. I like Ghost for independent media. For TV advertising, MNTN looks interesting. To run thrifty companies on a budget, I like Clerky for assistance with C-Corp/public benefit corporation formation (I wish they would support LLC conversion [Delaware allows it], but they have horror stories to tell of how that has gone wrong [6 months with lawyers and a $500k legal bill], so I understand why they funnel clients straight to C-Corps), Fairmint for affordable cap table management, Patriot Payroll, Thatch for Individual Coverage Health Reimbursement Arrangement (ICHRA) benefits management, Simplified Employee Pensions (SEP-IRA) (I condemn financiers that loan-to-own their way to cutting defined benefit pensions. Defined contribution plans seem easier to steward responsibly), Odoo for enterprise resource planning (ERP) back-office tasks like accounting, expense management, human resources that the other tools here don't do better, Remofirst for international HR employer of record (EOR) services, Taiga for project management, TokenScript and Penpot for design systems and prototypes (Penpot's output is convenient to convert into Mitosis components [I like Qwik for its phenomenal Google Lighthouse scores, Tauri for native apps, and Vite's module federation for micro-frontend development]), Weblate for internationalization and localization/language translation (though glocalization involves more than language), OpenStatus for uptime monitoring and status pages, Twenty for customer relationship management (CRM), Swetrix for web analytics, Tracardi for customer segmentation, Activepieces for marketing automation (Node-RED is truly FOSS [Richard Stallman is an extreme treasure], but Activepieces is more convenient), ListMonk for newsletters, transactional emails and Fonoster-based messages, Documenso for e-signatures, Papermark for document sharing/data/deal rooms, Docmost for team wikis with live collaboration, NextCloud for team file storage and office software. I encourage using openLCA for life-cycle assessments. I like Pricefy and Peeksite for competitive intelligence. Michael Porter's teachings on strategy seem particularly useful for setting prices, and dynamic pricing is the modern implementation of his teachings, though I think tractable probabilistic models and marketing ethics are necessary to regulate algorithmic collusion, predatory pricing, and price gouging. I've found Shopify super simple and convenient to use for online stores especially for sales tax management, though I've been thinking through headless e-commerce with Saleor, Shippo for programmable shipping label generation (including return labels) with competitive rates to develop in-house order fulfillment and return processing systems, once sales justify the cost then ShipMonk and one-way pallets for transactional third-party logistics (3PL) and distribution makes sense (lowers the cost and time it takes between when a customer places an order and when it is delivered to their address and better scales the direct-to-consumer business model of selling physical goods. For large contracts from retailers with narrow profit margins who need to recover costs from logistics errors with chargebacks, contract 3PL providers and reusable pallet pools are preferred as contract 3PLs may offer a contractual obligation to cover financial penalties for fulfillment errors, while pooled pallets ensure strict adherence to the retailer's receiving and equipment guidelines. I believe manufacturing should be geographically located nearby to major ports [where a variety of international freight forwarders compete for lower rates], connected by short-distance rail [busier lines tend to have cheaper pricing so long as the trains have capacity available] to a local transloader to transport goods from a rail spur to the factory. Then the logistics infrastructure is in place to trade futures contracts through commodities brokers and try to take delivery of cheaper-than-market production inputs. Odoo's warehouse management and Fleetbase's logistics fleet management system with Truckstop (SONAR's [and Xeneta's and Kpler's] alternative data is more comprehensive and useful for predictive speculation, but Truckstop's Rate Insights partnership with FTR Transportation Intelligence gets the job done at a transparent price] are interesting to coordinate production inputs, factory manufacturing, and fulfillment with proprietary logistics. At scale, Happy Returns or Narvar may also make sense to pool in-person returns into consolidated shipments back to fulfillment centers), API Ninja's Sales Tax/VAT APIs, and Juspay's Hyperswitch for routing payment processing. Hands Off Sales Tax seems competitive for sales tax compliance as tax nexus determination and the filing process in the plethora of jurisdictions that exist is complicated without more state legislatures adopting bills that implement Streamlined Sales Tax policies.

Inspired by Suzanne Konzelmann et al.'s Shareholder Value or Public Purpose? From John Maynard Keynes and Adolf Berle to the Modern Debate (I trace Keynesian-esque ideas even further back to the Guanzi from ancient China), I strive to incorporate and invest in equitable, public benefit entities (PBLP/PBLLC/PBCs) with measurable purpose statements and triple bottom line accounting (Boubaker et al.'s Research Handbook on the topic is helpful). I wish for the American adoption of the Global Reporting Initiative and International Financial Reporting Standards for measurement of management's duty of obedience to the public benefit purpose stated in the incorporation documents filed with their respective state authorities. I condemn vague and abstract purpose statements that do little but argue against the fiduciary duties of executives to shareholders. Thank you Ken Adams for criticizing abstract nouns. Before the dawn of shareholder value, the words "Deus enim et proficuum" or "For God and profit" were written on the ledgers of Flemish and Italian merchants like Francesco di Marco Datini. How did they see themselves serving both? Back then, value was constructed through stewardship, and profit meant, more generally, "being useful, going forward" before becoming attached to currency and the pecuniary wealth that defines the word today.

I’m interested in the incorporation of PBCs where founder shares are held by trusts. I am curious about the ability to issue equity to stakeholders. I love to see dividends, Reg D for accredited investors, Reg CF for crowdfunding, Nasdaq Private Market, Forge Global, or another licensed alternative trading system for private market liquidity, and Reg A as a stepping stone to filling out Form S-1 to go public with a direct listing (cuts out the intermediary costs of SPACs or initial public offerings [IPOs]). Midsize Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB)-registered financial auditors like Citrin Cooperman, EisnerAmper, CohnReznick seem to align with my frugality. The Big Four aren’t for everybody. With audits, value, liquidity, and dividends I imagine that the bifurcated irrevocable trusts’ investment committees could agree on total return swaps and monetizing collars with brokerages. To hedge against geopolitical risks, I am curious about a wealth management split between trusts formed in South Dakota, Liechtenstein, and the Cook Islands. I like the freedom to read Ken Adam's A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting and use Practical Law templates before receiving unbundled contract reviews from attorneys who can help redline and negotiate agreements with specialized boutique banks and private credit firms where Drafting for Corporate Finance by Angela Fontana and Alan G. Grinceri helps. Revenue-based financing and merchant cash advances with Pipe are also interesting to sidestep equity dilution and finance capital expenses with recurring revenue.

I condemn the abuse of patent offices with unnecessarily complicated patent thickets. To navigate these thickets, I found the law review articles Into the Woods by Jeffrey Wu & Claire Wan-Chiung Cheng, Anna Zhou's In the Thick(et) of It, and Emily Samra's The Business of Defense: Defense-Side Litigation Financing informative. Having read about strategic lawsuits against public participation, I am concerned about the American Rule of legal fee shifting. For some ventures it feels like asymmetrical lawfare. The Transnational Litigation Blog has me wary of forum selection and international arbitration clauses. I am thankful for Bryan Garner et. al's The Law of Judicial Precedent and Holger Spamann's explanation of how precedent presents itself in civil law legal systems.

For cybersecurity and protecting from fraud and identity theft, I advocate for the use of passkeys and authenticator codes for multi-factor authentication. The rule of thumb (heuristic) is "something you know, something you have, and something you are" meaning you must authenticate yourself with one or more passwords/PINs, a key (digital passkey or physical security key), and biometrics like your fingerprints, palms, or face (relying solely on biometrics is a vulnerability). Yubico security keys (they also sell FIPS YubiKeys), Proton Pass & SimpleLogin (I'm considering migrating to VaultWarden hosted on a private cloud), and Cloaked.com (they have a business plan) have been great. Efani is the most secure cellular plan I've found, I hate credit cards so I use Privacy.com to protect my debit card numbers (I'm awaiting Cloaked Pay), and iPostal1 to shield my address from merchants (they also serve businesses).

For archiving, traditional banker’s boxes are not suitable. I prefer 100% cotton paper printed by the Canon GX4020 with pigment ink (refilling ink tank printers is more affordable than replacing ink cartridges), stored in acid and lignin-free boxes and folders. For sustainable copy paper I prefer sugarcane fiber. ULINE, Southworth, and BAZIC Products are great. I trust Iron Mountain for offsite archiving. Magnetic tape is needed for archiving cold data. Even CERN still uses tape. Hard drives and SSDs can only retain data for a couple years. LTO tapes, when stored upright in cases at a steady temperature between 60°F and 77°F (15°C - 25°C) and relative humidity (RH) between 20% and 50% can last decades. Large fluctuations are more damaging than a steady, slightly sub-optimal temperature.