Home | 2020-21 | 2019-18 | 2017-16
Happy Holidays
This graph from the Financial Times is pretty shocking as far as charts go. The value of Apple, a single company, now surpasses the entirety of listed energy companies in the United States.
Contrarian indicator? We avoid the cycles inherent in the energy sector, but this certainly feels overdone.
Dubbed the “king of cashmere” by The New Yorker, Brunello Cucinelli is a very atypical CEO. This is a longer form read for the holidays on the value of slowing down and focusing on what is important. We certainly can’t say we personally abide by all his principles, but we think this one is worth your time.
I want to take a step backward. Who remembers the last email they sent yesterday? No one. Or the last text message. Emperor Hadrian used to say, “The daily business, the daily life, the daily chores, kills the human being.” I’m not interested in daily chores. We have now swapped information for knowledge, which is not the same thing.
Read more
This (very) short piece from Fred Wilson at AVC has a similar theme with a tech lens. Sometimes the most value is created through the parts of the business that are least flashy: coming in day after day and figuring out the minutia to build a better product than your competitors.
It was interesting to watch Greg and the Summize team tackle the “fail whale.” Instead of searching for a magic solution, they instrumented the entire system and just started rebuilding every part that was about to break.
It was a slow and steady approach. It took time. But within six months (or thereabouts), we had a much more stable system. And after about a year of this approach, we had mostly said goodbye to the fail whale.
Read more
A piece designed for life insurance salespeople in the 1940’s is not something you might expect from this letter. Please just trust us on this one.
The common denominator of success ––– the secret of success of every man who has ever been successful ––– lies in the fact that he formed the habit of doing things that failures don't like to do.
But if they don't like to do these things, then why do they do them? Because by doing the things they don't like to do, they can accomplish the things they want to accomplish. Successful men are influenced by the desire for pleasing results. Failures are influenced by the desire for pleasing methods and are inclined to be satisfied with such results as can be obtained by doing things they like to do
Read more
There is all too often survivorship bias in data sets and the stories we tell. It’s easy to talk about the startup or fund that became mainstream because of the quality of their product or abilities of their founder. The reality is that lots of potentially great investments and companies get lost in the shuffle purely because of bad timing or bad luck.
Often, as we revel in stories of start-up founders who struggled their way through on cups of ramen before the tide finally turned on viral product launches, high team performance or strategic partnerships, we forget how many other founders did the same thing, in the same industry and perished…The problem we mention is compounded by biographical or autobiographical narratives. The human brain is obsessed with building a cause and effect narrative. The problem arises when this cognitive machinery misfires and finds patterns where there are none.
Read more
Home | 2020-21 | 2019-18 | 2017-16