The Wisdom Wall

“So many, maybe there are exceptions to this, but I think it is the norm that the ridiculously successful, crazy genius entrepreneur also has personality traits that you and I would not want to associate with, probably wouldn't want to work with, wouldn't want to marry, wouldn't even want to have them as a friend.”

“So the fact that we can point out Theranos and FTX and WeWork, I think doesn't, doesn't do justice to say that, like, you shouldn't believe in ridiculous stories, because the ones that do work out were also ridiculous stories.”

“when they look back in hindsight and they have two or three massive, massive winners, massive exits by and large, those were not the companies that they expected to be driving their portfolio returns when they first made those investments. And by and large, there were other portfolio companies that they said, oh, if…”

“Daniel Kahneman, the great psychologist, he, he said something one time where he said, the greater, the degree of success, like the higher to the outlier, uh, the more standard deviations away from norm that you are of successful, the higher, the, the more luck played a role in that situation. And he said, there's…”

“I just think a lot of whether it's jealousy or economic pessimism is because people who don't feel good about their success They almost fantasize about other people failing in order to make themselves like justify their lower status in the world.”

“The right word to describe a lot of these people in any career, whether it's sports or startups, whatever it would be, is not even, it's not driven. It's not motivated. I think the right word is tortured. They are tortured that they are there. There's a problem they're trying to solve. They have not quite yet solved…”

“every company's valuation, whether it's a startup or a public company or even a bond, is a number from today multiplied by a story about tomorrow.”

“markets are always going to get to a ridiculous level because that's the only way that they can find the boundaries of what other people can put up with.”

“I think like the most perverse example of this Is the obsession with like morning routines. It's people getting so caught up in cause and effect that, you know, oh, if, if this person is, has this, if this successful person eats this for breakfast, that's what I should do as well. Completely just ignoring like every…”

“I actually think that risk and luck are virtually the same things, just in opposite directions. Risk and luck, the definition that I would give to both of them are, there are things that can happen outside of your control that have a bigger influence on outcomes than anything you did intentionally.”

“when you read about the Great Depression or the roaring 19 twenties, the, the details of what happened back then in terms of the kinds of businesses there were, the kinds of regulations there were, are obviously completely different than they are today. But the behaviors that people had around greed and fear and…”

“It can, there's so many examples historically of major, major world changing technologies that took years, if not decades before they were really moving the needle.”

“the number of people who are capable of building a great business Is way smaller than the number of people who are capable of building a great product.”

“It's always the case that whenever you have a capital cycle in any, whether it's public markets or private equity or VC, that you're going to get a lot of Tourist investors, people who are there because it's fun and they want to be there to enjoy the view, but they're not, they're not sticking around.”

“you earn your value when it's hard. You, you show your skill when it's hard. And so if, if you felt like you were skilled In VC over the last five years, but now you're struggling. Like, there's, there, there's kind of your sign.”