Golden Nuggets and Levels

Good Morning Bro,

Welcome to The Morning Bro, the newsletter that allows you to have it your way. Kinda like Burger King, except instead of serving cold subpar burgers, we're serving up fresh Golden Nuggets of information. (This newsletter is not sponsored by McDonald's...or is it?)

In Today's Morning 6 - 9:

• Money Monday and Google

• The Bro of Monday - Pieter Levels

• Weekend Happenings

• Bro-tastic memes

Benjamins and RIP Google?

It's all about the Benjamins. The latest Henley report shows that New York City is the top spot for the ultra-rich, with over 345k millionaires and almost 60 billionaires. San Fran comes in at a close third, with London and Singapore rounding out the top five. North America dominates the list with seven cities, while Asia and Europe have six and five cities respectively. Time to pack up and move to the Big Apple, where the real money's at. Here is a graphic from Visual Capitalism:

Is Google in Trouble?

Microsoft plans to upgrade its Bing search engine with artificial intelligence (AI) from OpenAI, the company it invested $1 billion in 2019. The update, which could be online by the end of March, would give Bing a competitive edge over Google, currently the world's top search engine.

Bing currently processes about 9% of worldwide desktop searches compared to Google's 80%. The upgrade would incorporate ChatGPT, a state-of-the-art chatbot that uses natural language processing (NLP) to "understand" human language and generate human-like text, into Bing.

Google executives have reportedly declared a "code red" since the release of ChatGPT in November, calling it a "make or break" moment for the company. (Oh Shit)

Level's To This Sh*t

An inspiration to write this newsletter was fellow Entrepreneur, Pieter levels. In 2014, Peter started a challenge to build 12 startups in 12 months by himself. At the beginning of his journey, each of Pieter's startups failed in a dramatic fashion. Until one day he tweeted a spreadsheet of a list of locations of the best places in the world for digital nomads/remote workers to live. 

Suddenly success and traction started to take place - people were showing immediate interest in adding to this list - 100's of entries began to flood Peter's spreadsheet. He decided that he should turn this spreadsheet into a website...and boom - NomadList was born...fast forward to today this business now profits him well over $2,700,000 annually with NO employees.

After achieving some success with NomadList, Pieter didn't stop there, over the next 9 years he went on to launch 70+ other start-ups that you probably never heard of because 98% of them failed. The only other 3 notable startups include:

• Rebase - a platform that helps remote workers become legal residents in countries that want to attract them, currently focusing on Portuguese residency for high-skilled remote workers.

• Remote OK - a job board that connects remote workers with companies looking to hire remotely.

• Avatarai - an online service that allows users to purchase AI-generated avatars of themselves, friends, or anyone.

Pieter Levels believes in the power of minimal effective competency, or the idea of becoming proficient in just the bare minimum number of skills necessary to achieve a desired outcome. He also promotes the nomadic lifestyle, where individuals can work from anywhere in the world and build businesses that can be run remotely. Here is a chart gathered in 2022 to show what Pieter has been preaching for almost a decade.

Pieter Levels is a driven and innovative entrepreneur who is always looking for new ways to challenge himself and test his skills. His focus on minimal effective competency and remote work has allowed him to build successful businesses and live a fulfilling, nomadic lifestyle. Let's be more like Pieter.

Weekend Catchups

The DOJ has seized Robinhood shares worth over $456 million linked to Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange that filed for bankruptcy in November, due to allegations of money laundering and wire fraud. Bankman-Fried's lawyers have argued that the seized shares, which are owned by a shell company, should not be part of the bankruptcy proceedings as they are not implicated in FTX's insolvency and are needed to fund Bankman-Fried's legal defense.

Ferrari, Red bull racing, and Mercedes have all cut ties with Cryptocurrency sponsors. The latest being Ferrari - has ended its multi-year partnership deals with Velas Blockchain resulting in a cumulative $35 million loss for the Italian team ahead of the 2023 Formula One season.

Speaking of Italy, An Italian company developed a robot for marble sculpture creation. The company called Robotor combined traditional skills with the latest tech, like 3D scans and robotics, to create a machine that can handle complex works of art. They even developed an AI algorithm to make it easier for the robot to do its thing.

An 82-year-old Walmart cashier, Butch Marion, has retired after a TikToker helped raise more than $100,000 in online donations, allowing Marion to receive a check for $108,682 on his last shift on Wednesday. Marion plans to take it easy and "sit by the river and have a beer and enjoy his life." The TikTok video is linked here.

On Sunday, thousands of supporters of Brazil's former President Jair Bolsonaro stormed the country's Congress, Supreme Court, and presidential offices in the capital, Brasília. The supporters, who are convinced that the recent presidential election was "stolen" from Bolsonaro, broke windows, set off fires, fought with police, and raised slogans. President Lula, who was not in Brasília at the time, blamed Bolsonaro for the violence and invoked emergency powers to restore order in the capital. An investigation is underway and those responsible for the violence may face charges.

BMW has unveiled the "i Vision Dee," a concept electric sports sedan that can change color on demand, it can cycle between 32 different colors and has mix-and-match capabilities.

Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, appeared in public in Thailand for the first time since he disappeared from view in October 2020 after criticizing China's financial regulations. He was seen at the Jay Fai restaurant and posing in a fighting stance with Thai boxing champion Sombat "Buakaw" Banchamek. Ant Group, the company Ma founded, also announced on Saturday that it is streamlining voting rights to prevent any one shareholder from having a controlling vote, potentially paving the way for a stock market float.

Bro-Tastic Memes

Thanks so much for taking the time to read my writing. I hope you enjoyed reading my content. If you have a moment, I'd love to get your feedback through the survey below. I'm always on the lookout for new and interesting topics to write about, and I value your input. Thanks in advance for your help!"