"Live the Library" with Charlie Munger - a thread.
After being inspired by @djrosent to finally sit down and read "Poor Charlie's Almanack" I spent a good chunk during quarantine reading it each morning.
Timely this week when Elon Musk's net worth passes Warren Buffett.
No matter your career; ask yourself "What am I selling?" And then ask if you would buy it.
8/ "Life's tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late. When you're finished changing, you're finished."
(Benjamin Franklin)
“Once you stop learning, you start dying.” (Albert Einstein)
9/ "Take a simple idea and take it seriously." (Charlie Munger)
"The only way to win is to work, work, work, work, and hope to have a few insights." (Charlie Munger)
10/ "What are you the best in the world at?"
You don't have to know every business in and out. But you have to know something, and know it well.
11/ Adopting a "spirit of humility."
Everyone is convinced that they're so often right that they would exert significantly more energy to proving themselves right than working to see if they might be wrong.
19/ One of the most powerful ideas I've seen recently:
"Before you deserve to hold a strong opinion you should be able to argue the counter-argument better than those who wish to disagree with you."
If you want to have faith in God, embrace religious apologetics
20/ Teaching is not easy, nor should it be.
The best advice I've heard is "Simplify, and Intensify."
Side note: Have the humility to acknowledge when you could have done something better, even when you did well.
Listening to @BrentBeshore and @patrick_oshag on @InvestLikeBest talking about how they've been chatting for 10 hours and decided to record an episode, you can feel that same kind of friendship.
23/ If people weren't so distracted by all the money Charlie Munger had made as an investor they might spend more time thinking about the educational philosopher that he was.
24/ People have confused science and opinion because they're unsure and to become sure is far too complicated.
The ethos of "do whatever you want, harm no one" leads to the same ends of "take what you like, ban what you hate."
26/ People sometimes dismiss the idea of finding your "circle of competence" because it means you can't learn.
Expanding that circle is just as important as having one. But knowing what is in your circle of competence and what is NOT is the way to avoid overconfidence.
33/ The only thing you can know about a forecast with 100% certainty is that it is wrong.
Forecasting ought to be a difficult mental exercise where you're trying to understand effects of effects.
You're not looking for the right number. You're looking for the right magnitude.
34/ "The acquisition of wisdom is a moral duty."
"An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people."
"Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?"
35/ Really smart people read as much as possible. They consume information from people, books, movies, experiences.
36/ “It is dangerous to be right in matters where established men are wrong." [[Voltaire]]
Find the balance between taking on contrarian stances you feel strongly about and having a spirit of humility to learn from those around you / more senior than you.
37/ In my religion I often ask myself "why I believe."
Invert, always invert.
"Why wouldn't I believe?" Explore the counterarguments to your belief and you'll come out stronger if you still hold that belief.
38/ Are you self-aware enough and incentivized correctly to acknowledge when you might not be the best player to play?
39/ When it comes to "human misjudgment" the gateway sin is refusing to change your mind because it forcibly locks down every other misjudgment and stops you from improving.
40/ "Self-Criticism" may be one of the most important ideas I've taken away from Charlie Munger.
"I feel that I'm not entitled to have an opinion unless I can state the arguments against my position better than the people who are in opposition."
41/ Rome vs. Athens. Practical vs. imagination.
"Part of the problem is clearly foresight, a failure of imagination." @pmarca
“Too many smart people go into finance and law. That’s both a compliment and a criticism.” @elonmusk
42/ Munger has me thinking about fairness. In a world where we wish we had more fairness the deepest regions of my @RoamResearch graph brought me these gems:
43/ Past successes will lull you into a false sense of ability. The only antidote is self-reflection and post-mortems on your own past successes.
Marc Andreessen has grown a16z from their first fund of $300M in 2009 to over $25B+ in AUM as of 2022.
His framework for understanding any business is simple. It comes down to unpacking what he calls "the onion theory of risk."
Here's what he means...
"If you’re an investor, you look at the risk around an investment
as if it’s an onion. Just like you peel an onion and remove each
layer in turn, risk in a startup investment comes in layers that
get peeled away — reduced — one by one." @pmarca
So what are the risks?
(1) Founder Risk: Does the startup have the right founding team?
A great technologist, plus someone who can run the company?
Is the technologist really all that?
Is the business person capable of running the company?
In the last 3 years, we saw the Unicorn Club pass 1K+ "members." Many of them have:
✅ $1B+ valuations
✅ Years of runway (maybe)
✅ <$100M revenue
But a lot of VCs are predicting that 50%+ of those companies could fail. Here are the most likely reasons why…
The first important reality is that for most of these companies, any valuation mark from 2020 - 2021 aren't just one of many data points. They're IRRELEVANT data points.
In the words of @bgurley, "forget those prices happened."
Opendoor has $8B in revenue. Their market cap has dropped from $19B at their peak to $1B today
Bird dropped from $2.4B to $115M
Twilio has ~$3.6B in revenue; they dropped from $70B to ~$8B
Here's why gross margins can kill a business...
First, it's important to note that (1) these are dramatically different businesses, and (2) they have plenty of moving parts to their business beyond gross margin.
But across the board, low gross margins do you no favors.
They eat away at your ability to ever generate profit
The more expensive it is to generate your revenue, the less wiggle room you have to fund the operational complexity behind growing that revenue.
COGS can come from things like inventory costs, carrier costs, or charging costs.