Maybe because I’m going back on the warpath that I’m noticing an interesting trend among my Valley peers that have been “in the game” since the 2010s: we’re building again.

This part is choked with anecdotes, but hear me out. COVID has “reset” our social and cultural patterns, which in turn affects what kind of business we set out to do in such a changing society. If you’re caught in the middle of a leveraged position or making a risky move, you’re sitting out this round. But rest assured, those who were preparing to get lucky, well, your ship has arrived.

How can I say this when we’re facing record-high unemployment during peak political discord before the upcoming November 2020 elections? Most of the journalists are positing that the money is changing hands to benefit the big players.

On the ground, however, I’m seeing 2x entrepreneurs and even more first-time entrepreneurs pulling out bullet magazines to shoot. And I think I know why: this is a time of peak-uncertainty. Uncertainty is the fog of war that clears the table of bullshit players, where only the players with conviction stay. And in this chaos, we gravitate towards exploring uncertainty to make calculated, certainty bets. So it has this interesting multiplier effect where because most people around you are hesitant to shoot if you HIT something, you’re coming out way more ahead of this post-COVID than if you were playing the usual stakes pre-COVID. The downside is the same in both scenarios.

History has proven good ideas win in good AND bad economies. Uncertainty in 2020 has become the forcing function of “winner take all” dynamics across the whole world to make interesting bets.

What are you saving your bullets for?

Edit: “Applications to form businesses in the U.S. surged unexpectedly in the third quarter…”