AI is a tool. A misnamed tool at that, as the AI in the news these days is a complex web of statistics and matrix multiplication that resembles human intelligence, but which is far from actually intelligent. They are big, innovative, step-function-changing tools, like the printing press vs. hand copied books, like the typewriter vs. hand copied letters, like word processors vs. hand typed...
The more I dig into the history of Berkshire Hathaway, the more it looks like Warren Buffett’s strategy is opportunism vs. innovation. For example, the reason Buffett operates one holding company instead of three was a run in with the SEC, as I explained in an earlier post. The reason he runs Berkshire Hathway instead of just owning it through Buffett Partnerships LLC is an even earlier...
Hans Rosling was an impressive public speaker, with not just an ability to distill complex topics into easy to understand stories, but to do so with a flair of showmanship. One of the many lessons in those stories was the fact that the world is no longer divided into “developed” and “developing” economies, but is instead is now a world with a continuum of incomes. What...
It’s been over a decade since I was part of the venture-backed tech industry. The only thing I miss about it is the massive amount of attention it receives, and from that, the orders of magnitude more capital that flows to tech startups vs. any other sector. Meanwhile, there is nothing like a decade of decompression and deprogramming to get a better view of the realities of the whole tech...
I was born in the State of New Jersey, a few tens of miles from New York City. In the many years growing up there, I don’t once recall anyone ever comparing it to the original Jersey, nor anyone ever talking about visiting the Island of Jersey, which gave New Jersey its name. Then last September I was networking at an African investment conference in London and serendipitously met a fellow...
After finishing Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist by Roger Lowenstein, I’m confident that Warren would be quite pleased that I managed to pick up a used copy for just 75ยข at my local library. Warren may be one of the 10 richest people on the planet, but Warren Buffett loves a bargain. Like most owners in Berkshire Hathaway, before reading this book I knew a little about Buffett...
Venture capital and angel investing are realms filled with unspoken assumptions. One such assumption is that companies should burn through substantial capital before even considering profitability. This notion is misguided! Countless startups, often overlooked by these investors, are compelled to be profitable to survive. If these investors took a moment to recognize these startups, they would...
Over the last decade I’ve spent much of my time managing funds (plus one investment holding company) investing in young companies (a.k.a. startups, a.k.a. SMEs). This includes not only equity investments, and revenue-based investments, but also traditional loans. Most of the borrowers understand what a loan is, and how loans work. For those that understand the follow the expectations, debt...
As an entrepreneur and investor I’m constantly running through “what if” analyses. In my off time it seems I do something similar, but there I let creative others come up with new variation. What this looks like is Harry Potter fan fiction, where you already know the characters and story arcs, but where each time you start a new story, you get a different “what if”...
PowerPoint (and Google Slides) are ubiquitous in modern business, but techniques such as properly scaling images are not. This post is a quick guide on scaling images without distorting those images. For example, the image on the left is taken from a real pitch deck. From the shape of the man’s head it is clear this image has been resized, but in doing so the image has been distorted...
