This Week I Learned #66
“Go to bed smarter than when you woke up”
2019-09-02
An insider's account of Aurora Cannabis: They paid Dave Chappelle $1M to come hang out with them. They branded their SWAG to Reigning Champs, a clothing line that sells $150 white sweatpants. There were no proper accounting of inventory so it was easy for people to take laptops and request new ones saying they lost it. Questionable? Very. Great use of financials for a unprofitable company that doesn't seem to have a path to it? Nope.
2019-09-03
What goes in a person's mind when death looms close? Three thoughts Ric Elias had as his plane crashed to impending doom. The realization that 1) most things need not be postponed 2) there is no need to fight to be right, move on and be free of negative energy and 3) You can never spend enough time with people you love. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_zk2DpgLCs
2019-09-04
"Envision, create, and believe in your own universe, and the universe will form around you." - Zappos. It's insane how Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, slowly went all in on the company. Zappos had been one of 20-something VC investments for his VC fund. Over time, it became the only investment he had conviction in and he slowly invested all his money into that one company. He later started selling his real estate investments to fund Zappos three months at a time. Eventually, he had invested all of the $30-40M he earned from selling his first company. An example of concentrating one's investment with conviction but also the gut-wrenching reality of pushing through into ambiguity.
2019-09-05
"To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose onesel." - Doren Kierkegaard, Danish existentialist philosopher
2019-09-06
"Diversification is a protection against ignorance. I mean, if you want to make sure that nothing bad happens to you relative to the market, you own everything. There’s nothing wrong with that. I mean, that is a perfectly sound approach for somebody who does not feel they know how to analyze businesses. If you know how to analyze businesses and value businesses, it’s crazy to own 50 stocks or 40 stocks or 30 stocks, probably, because there aren’t that many wonderful businesses that are understandable to a single human being, in all likelihood." - Warren Buffet. A nugget from the 1996 annual meeting. https://buffett.cnbc.com/video/1996/05/06/afternoon-session---1996-berkshire-hathaway-annual-meeting.html