📽️ WATCH: Symphony CEO Vik Chawla says people could "travel the world by just saving money." In a conversation with Jackson Hinkle @symphonyio | @vivaldi0x | @jacksonaltonh

We built the first app that lets you travel the world by saving money Credit cards give you points for spending Symphony rewards you with points for saving Earn a fixed 5% APY, plus points transferable to the largest airlines and hotels Let your savings take you places

We built the first app that lets you travel the world by saving money Credit cards give you points for spending Symphony rewards you with points for saving Earn a fixed 5% APY, plus points transferable to the largest airlines and hotels Let your savings take you places

The vibes in Miami feel pretty fantastic right now. The outcomes is the best I’ve seen. Founders are getting funded. Companies are getting built. Investors are showing up. People are taking real swings. Most importantly, founders are helping each other. That part matters the most. Miami tech has always had a chip on its shoulder. For years, people asked “is there actually anything happening there?” and the answer was annoying because there was, it was just early, uneven, and hard to explain without sounding defensive. Now you can feel the compounding. A founder raises and immediately starts making intros for the next founder. Someone gets a customer and shares the playbook. Someone meets a great operator and passes them to three other companies. Someone writes a small angel check into a person who probably would have been ignored by the traditional network. That’s how ecosystems actually get built. People helping people climb. As a result: 1. The ladder here feels more open. In a lot of places, tech feels like a prestige maze. Right school, right company, right fund, right dinner, right group chat. Miami is still messy enough that the doors are not all locked yet. A kid from FIU can meet a founder. A first-time founder can get in front of angels. An operator can become a founder. A community builder can become the connective tissue for an entire scene. That’s special. 2. The energy is ambitious without being miserable. People are working hard, and it doesn’t feel like everyone is trying to win by making everyone else feel behind. There’s less “I missed the last wave” energy. More “what can I build, who can I help, and how do we make this city more legit” energy. That is a much healthier default. 3. The wins create mobility. When a Miami company raises, hires, exits, or even just survives long enough to become credible, the whole city gets a little stronger. Employees learn. Founders recycle capital. Operators level up. Angels get created. Customers become references. People outside elite tech networks get a shot. This is the part I care about the most. Tech should be one of the last great engines of social mobility. Miami still feels like a place where that can be true. 4. The best people here are still accessible. There is ego everywhere. It’s tech. Let’s be serious. Most of the newly transplanted rich folks are meeting local founders (Larry Page had the founder of an AI co over recently) & investing heavily in Miami (ie Citadel, Palantir grants). That is new. And fragile. The second an ecosystem becomes too status-obsessed, it starts eating itself. Miami has a real chance to avoid that because the culture is naturally relationship-driven. People here remember who helped them. They remember who showed up. They remember who was around before it was obvious. People will still roll their eyes at Miami tech. That’s fine. They rolled their eyes at crypto. They rolled their eyes at remote work. They rolled their eyes at Florida. They rolled their eyes at half the people who ended up building real things. Miami does not need to be SF. Miami has its own edge: immigrant ambition, sales culture, hospitality, finance, crypto DNA, Latin America access, weird builders, local pride, and a community that still feels small enough for one generous person to make a meaningful difference. That is a very good setup. The outcomes are getting better. The founders are getting sharper. The capital is getting more serious. The network is getting denser. And the best part is that it still feels early enough that anyone serious can show up and matter. Pretty fantastic vibes tbh.

Watched few podcasts with Audemars Piguet’s CEO Ilaria Resta. AP x Swatch collab seems to be about selling to women, which she says is AP’s most “underdeveloped” opportunity. Royal Pop can ride the Labubu keychain wave. Women are <20% of AP sales but clear trend for the demographic. She says 45% of women will own a mechanical watch by 2030. Growing interest in complications but current designs don’t fit the wrist well. AP working on watched with smaller dimensions. Resta took over as CEO in 2023 after spending past two decade building brands in beauty products (Firmenich) as well as hair products and homecare (P&G). One of her first moves was to stop classifying AP watches as either men’s or women’s. AP currently sells 50,000 watches a year and does ~$3B (compared to Rolex, which sells 1.2 million units a year and does $13B annual). Seems AP has room to increase supply without becoming too ubiquitous and tapping women’s market makes a ton of sense. *** Interview (2025): youtube.com/watch?v=0VEAomME… CNBC with some watch stats: cnbc.com/2025/01/10/audemars…

What founders pitch vs what they ship