being mean is not strength. not at this age, at least.

we’ve lived enough to know better. surely, we all carry scars and we have rebuilt ourselves in ways no one saw.
so when someone still hides in jealousy, gossip, or petty games, that’s anything but power. that’s a small person trying to feel important.
and yes, secure women don’t compete with other. they connect, support, and they have a heart big enough to understand that there’s space for everyone to win without having to tear down anyone.

“Temperament is more important than IQ. You need reasonable intelligence, but you absolutely have to have the right temperament. Otherwise, something will snap you.”
- Warren Buffet

over the past few weeks i’ve spent time talking with some quite amazing young people studying both here and abroad. interviews for the report. i was glad to be able to pick some of their brains and also find shared ground.

one of the guys i’ve spoke with said smth along the lines “surely you need hard skills. but patience matters more than skills. if you have enough patience, you’ll be able to learn whatever is necessary sooner or later. you just have to be able to get yourself to sit down and get it done.”

i would’ve written more but my fingers are so sore from scrubbing away stickers from my laptop with my ID card and wet wipes.
stickers aren’t worth a whole evening torture😭

there is a paradox in emerging market theory called the "infrastructure trap."
an underdeveloped market looks like a blue ocean because incumbents haven't colonized it yet. but those incumbents aren't there precisely because of the lack of solid infrastructure. so the first movers don't just have to build a business, they have to build the infrastructure the business runs on.

just yesterday Wolt announced that its leaving Uzbekistan market. when Wolt launched in Uzbekistan in October 2024, its own expansion head noted that the Uzbek market was far less saturated than Europe, but that also means lower order volumes, lower average basket sizes, and thinner margins while building scale. DoorDash hasn't announced country-by-country specific reasons for its exit from 4 locations: Qatar, Singapore, Japan, and Uzbekistan. so this could be just a reflection of DoorDash's decision to focus on investing in most sustainable clearest pathways.

but that also reminds me of Divan's case.
Divan.ru entered Uzbek market in 2023, having opened Divan.uz. the demand was there as revenue grew 5x from 2023 to 2024, and customers actually liked the product. but apparently the company hasn't predicted the degree of operational difficulties: customs and logistics delays from not being in the EAEU (weeks or months of waiting vs. the near-instant delivery model that made Divan successful in Russia/Belarus/Kazakhstan), no reliable last-mile delivery setup ("if we find a van, we'll ship it; if not, we won't"), and cultural friction in managing local staff. a beautiful website and heavy ad spend masked the fact that the backend simply didn't work.

what makes Uzbekistan particularly tricky is that it looks more ready than it is. it has a large, young, urban population in Tashkent, decent smartphone penetration, and genuine consumer appetite for modern products. but the connective tissue lags behind the demand side. companies see the demand signal and move, then get surprised by the supply-side constraints.

Uzbekistan is a promising market, but it seems that marketing or a slick app isn't enough to unlock it. rather, t's grinding operational infrastructure-building that takes longer and costs more than growth-stage companies typically want to invest.

@summernotes

the rich have different obsessions now. and it might say a lot about us as society too.

read a piece in the Economist recently on this shift and it made me think for a bit.

the flex of the past was private jets, watches and wine. now tho it's the best hotels, restaurants, and sporting events. the ultra luxury market is going through some real identity crisis as price of goods is down, price of experiences is up. a Super Bowl ticket is double what it was a few years ago. the Met Gala (if you can even get in) costs over twice as much as in 2019. ultra luxury goods have fallen in price since 2023 while ultra luxury experiences are up 90% since 2019.

why the shift tho? well, luxury goods are kind of everywhere now. designer bags are available worldwide and the well-off middle class buys them too. lab-grown diamonds are literally identical to the real thing.
so what's left for the ultra rich to signal status with is scarcity.

Thorstein Veblen (american economist) argued that a good is luxurious not just because it's expensive, but because one person having it limits another person's ability to have it (exclusive, rival). u can resell a luxury watch but sitting on center court at Wimbledon? not really. eating at a three Michelin star restaurant means that for those few hours, nobody else can sit at ur table. and yes, all the more special when it goes on social media.

oh but i think the ultra rich are just a microcosm of what's happening in society overall. for our grandparents, wealth was measured in possessions. a house, a car, clothes. things u could point to. things people could see. now tho it's mostly about experiences (travel is a big one). so the signal shifted from what u own to what u've lived.
several factors could be at play tho.
one, Maslow, basically. as societies get wealthier overall, more people move up the needs hierarchy. once security and comfort are covered, people reach for meaning, identity, connection. and usually experiences tend to deliver those more than objects do.
millennials also came of age during the 2008 financial crisis and watched their parents lose homes and savings tied to things. covid, meanwhile, reminded our generation that life is short and uncertain. the conclusion was to spend on living, not accumulating.
and finally there is hedonic adaptation. psychologically we adapt to possessions faster than we adapt to experiences. u buy a new car and within weeks it's just.. ur car.
but things like a trip to Japan, a concert, a dinner with someone u love, they live in memory differently. and they compound, get emotionally richer over time.

@summernotes