Podcast

Good investors show their best deals to their friends, so one subtle type of social proof is when you see a group of investors who like to invest together. More

Social proof only works when the actors are independent and it matches up to your diligence and conviction. More

There’s a psychology trick you can use when you’re trying to find out why someone does or doesn’t do something. More

Parker Thompson, aka Startup L Jackson, wrote: “Every investor who comes in after me is a spreadsheet jockey, and every investor who comes in before me is a dart-throwing monkey. More

At the end of the day, everything is about traction. You pick a great team, go for a big market and invest in great products because you’re trying to predict what masses of people will use or pay for. More

Ben Horowitz is credited with the line: “The best product doesn’t always win, but the winning product becomes the best product.” There are exceptions, though. More

Because of the nature of the Internet, products that seem extremely niche can spread quickly across the world, get into everyone’s phones and saturate entire markets before the competition knows what’s happening. More

The important concepts in modern microeconomics are: monopolies, network effects, supply and demand, cumulative advantage, moats, lock-in, marginal costs, consumer and producer surplus, price discrimination, pricing power, viral networking, viral adoption, and economies of scale, among others.  Most of the valuable businesses are natural monopolies. More

I credit a lot of my investing acumen to having a loose understanding of complexity science, as pioneered by everyone from Brian Arthur to Benoit Mandelbrot to Nassim Taleb. More

A great company expands the market it’s in. You need some sense that the market is expandable and it’s not limited to what it seems at first glance. More