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- #152 – Toto Wolff & Beginners
#152 – Toto Wolff & Beginners
Quote, Podcast, Observation, Deep Dive, Tweet.
Dimitri Gremos
April 22, 2026
Good morning everyone,
Hope you’re having a great week!
Here are 5 things I found interesting over the past few days.
Let’s jump in.
read online on my website
read time 3 minutes
#152 – The Rundown:
Quote: Making time to know yourself.
Podcast: The rise of Toto Wolff.
Observation: The Creative Beginner.
Deep Dive: Redpoint’s AI market update.
Tweet: Where do billionaires live?
Quote:
“If you are never alone, you cannot know yourself.”
Podcast:
Toto Wolff: Mercedes’ Billion-Dollar F1 Boss
In the motorsport world, Toto Wolff is a captivating figure.
The CEO of the Mercedes Formula 1 team is the most successful team principal in the sport’s history, having led the Silver Arrows to a record 8-straight Constructors’ Championships from 2014 to 2021.
However, the now-billionaire’s business career is less understood and perhaps less appreciated.
In this episode of Good Bad Billionaire, BBC business editor Simon Jack and journalist Zing Tsjeng dive deeply into exactly how the 54-year-old accumulated a net worth of ~US$2.5 billion today.
In a career that saw him go from investment banking in Warsaw to consulting in the steel industry, and then from technology in San Francisco to starting one of the first tech-focused venture capital firms in Europe, Toto’s path to Formula 1 and billionaire status has been anything but traditional.
Highly recommend giving this one a listen, particularly those of you who have an interest in Formula 1 and/or want some inspiration around how to apply a particular skillset in an unorthodox way.
I’ve been reflecting on this episode quite heavily over the last few days, and if I was to distil Toto’s approach into a ‘blueprint’ of sorts, it’d be this:
1) Build capital, judgement, and expertise in a different, fast-growing industry (for Toto, this was tech/investing/capital raising)
2) Purchase equity in the specific sector or industry you’re looking to break into (Formula 1), preferably in an underperforming incumbent with structural upside
3) Become recognised as an expert at the intersection of the technical/cultural world of the industry, and the financial world of capital
This is the first episode of Good Bad Billionaire that I’ve listened to and I was really impressed. Think of it as a concise, conversational version of the Acquired podcast for those of you familiar.
Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
[Duration: 47 minutes]
{h/t Mr Family Office}
P.S. I made a Spotify playlist with every podcast I’ve ever recommended. Hope they bring you as much value as they’ve brought me.
Observation:
The Creative Beginner
Came across this thought-provoking reflection from American radio personality Ira Glass that I wanted to share:
“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me.
All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you.
A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work.
Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions.
And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
Man, this hit hard.
One of the toughest things about working on something you really care about is that there’s a finite amount of time you can allocate towards it.
It’s the struggle of knowing all of the improvements you could make and want to make, but can’t.
Whether you’re constrained by time, resources, or anything else.
And I’m definitely feeling this with Sweat Capital at the moment.
There are so many things the team and I want to do to improve the show and platform we’re building, but the speed at which we are able to make said improvements is practically limited.
We’re currently in that gap; our “taste” exceeds our "work”.
All we can do, as with all of the things I care about and am working towards at the moment, is keep showing up.
“It’s gonna take a while.
It’s normal to take a while.
You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
{h/t Shane Parrish}
Deep Dive:
Redpoint’s AI Market Update
It was extremely thought-provoking to dive into Redpoint Ventures’ recently published AI market update.
Some screenshots from the deck and commentary containing my biggest takeaways:
So, that would mean that capex spend is forecasted to be US$1.2 TRILLION across JUST 2 YEARS (2026-27) from Meta, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon ALONE (??!!)
A meaningful point to distinguish the Dotcom bubble from today’s AI buildout – personally haven’t heard anyone mention this before
It’s not all about price, even if AI does eventually force ‘software development costs to trend asymptotically towards zero’
Just because a company can theoretically code something on their own, doesn’t mean they now all of a sudden will
I believe this is a representation of the American VC industry, but I imagine it would be a similar trend being observed in Australia
I guess those companies on the right really could done with some AI back in the day…
You can check out Redpoint’s slide deck here.
Tweet:
Where Do Billionaires Live?
{h/t Mr Family Office}
Thanks for reading! Grateful for your support.
Stay hungry, stay humble, stay curious. ⚡
In case you missed it, last week’s newsletter looked at intentionality vs serendipity in careers, the surprising economic impacts of daylight savings & more.
If you enjoyed this edition, it would mean the world if you could forward it to a friend or send them my website.
This goes a long way to helping me reach more people :)
See you in the next one,
Dimi