Arete substack
A little bit of everything, a lot of nothing.
Finance & Economics
Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition (ETA): right when I joined the MBA program I came across with two terms: ETA & Search Funds. ETA is a career path in which you acquire an existing business and step in as a CEO. This a very intriguing alternative for professionals who aspire to lead companies in which they raise (Search) funds from investors to source and search for opportunities.
Buying your way into entrepreneurship: a great HBR article covering important concepts and considerations about ETA and Search Funds.
ETA podcast: a great series of episodes from Polski Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation (Chicago Booth), hosted by Brian O’Connor.
What happens in Vegas..: I finish reading an intriguing book, called Caesar Palace Coup, about the turbulent restructuring of the biggest gaming empire of the world. Business the traditional concepts of finance, restructuring and negotiations, this was a most-read story about a clash of titans over money and power (Apollo, TPG, Apaloosa, GSO, Eliot, Kirkland, Paul & Weis, Houlihan Lokey, and others)
Here it is a very comprehensive about the twists-and-turns:
Brazil’s investment and Economic outlook: the Stock Pickets episode with Ruy Alves was amazing. It was a holistic analysis economic performance, externalities (US, China), AI, big companies, etc
Philosophy
Robert Greene episode in Andrew Huberman’s podcast: the title A Process for Finding & Achieving Your Unique Purpose might resonate with a lot of people in their search for a purpose in life. Greene has the ability to digest a wide range of topics and explain them in a very easy and contemporaneous way. He is working in a new book called Sublime.
Currently reading Frames of Mind
Public Health
Definition: Neither the name, nor the functionality of CRISPR is normal. Actually, it does have breakthrough functionalities. CRISPR is an acronym for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, which are families of DNA sequences present in certain bacteria. These sequences contain, in turn, DNA fragments from viruses that have previously infected those bacteria. It functions as a immunological memory, as they store the molecular fingerprint of viruses in the DNA of bacteria
Highlights:
Sickle Cells Disease: FDA approved Casgevy, the first therapy using CRISPR/CAS9 in patients 12 years of age and older with recurrent vaso-occlusive crises. It expects for generate $2.6B in revenue for Vertex & CRISPR Therapeutics
Potential market in 2028: $18.5B
Expected upfront investment: $900M
Drugs in development: 270+
Some players in the market: Editas Medicine, Caribou Biosciences, Intellia Therapeutics, Beam Therapeutics and CRISPR Therapeutics
Bill Gates, Brazil & SUS Analysis: Bill Gates wrote an article at the end of 2023 sharing some positive perspective about Brazil’s universal health system and social programs. He is the first, nor the last person to acknowledge the development Brazil has been through the decades. Even though there is still a relevant progress to be made and challenges to pass through (funding, inequality, etc), there is a positive sentiment about what have been made.
4 Historical FDA approvals from 2023
Energy
Quantum Physics: during my series of flight from San Francisco to Belo Horizonte, I started to read What is Real, from Adam Becker, a book that delineates the story behind the quantum mechanics, one of the most important scientific achievements in human history. One of the interesting curiosity is that David Bohm wrote his biggest contribution to physics while he was in Brazil, more specifically working at University of São Paulo.
Berkeley new dual degree: Berkeley is a power house in energy, physics, data science, etc for over a century and has recently launched a new concurrent program: master's degree in business and climate solutions.
Scientists successfully replicate historic nuclear fusion breakthrough three times
See you,
RR