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Tren Griffin

@trengriffin

26 Nov

1/ “Paul Allen and myself, expecting the hobby market to expand, hired Monte Davidoff and developed Altair BASIC. Though the initial work took only two months, the three of us have spent most of the last year documenting, improving and adding features to BASIC." Altair Newsletter

2/ "Paul wrote the bootstrap loader on the plane. Everyone, including ourselves, was amazed when this BASIC worked the first time. Many MITS employees who couldn’t comprehend what to do with an Altair saw the value of the computer for the first time.”

3/ "Our primary emphasis was on a fail-safe BASIC that would always indicate user error instead of crashing or producing the wrong result. Our software was going to be put in ROM where it couldn’t be updated. Our other major worry was that our simulator might be incorrect." BG

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Tren Griffin

@trengriffin

23 Nov

1/ "Investment can be explained with a 2×2 matrix. On one axis you can be right or wrong. In the other axis you can be consensus or non-consensus. If you’re wrong you don’t make money. The only to make outsized returns is by being right and non-consensus.”25iq.com/2016/10/28/why…

2/ "To achieve superior investment results, your insight into value has to be superior. Thus you must learn things others don’t, see things differently or do a better job of analyzing them – ideally all three.” You want the market to agree with you, but not right now. Eventually.

3/ Base rates help you understand historical experience. They are only used to calibrate a forecast intended to be non consensus and right. If all you had to do was know base rates to outperform a market, historians would be the best investors. You are searching for a mistake.

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Tren Griffin

@trengriffin

20 Nov

1/ Humans often don't act independently. We simply don't have the time or resources to make every decision on our own. Nature has programmed humans to herd and fighting that instinct at the right time is a trained response you can get better at. Learning from mistakes helps.

2/ Humans herding can create feedback loops that can amplify like Jimmy Hendrix used feedback with his guitar. That feedback can be good or bad. Businesses work to create beneficial feedback loops. Investors work to spot businesses that create those feedback loops successfully.

3/ "Emergence" occurs when local behavior transforms into global phenomena disconnected from its origins. Unexpected things happen in complex systems. Cause and effect aren't simple to untangle ex post. The best response is to stay humble when making predictions. Weird happens.

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Tren Griffin

@trengriffin

20 Nov

1/ My advice on mentoring always starts with "Give to Get.”

Find someone you admire and offer to help them without asking for anything in return. The benefits from this relationship will come back to you often enough that your returns will be better than any other investment

2/ I'm not suggesting you make this offer to help to just anyone. An offer of assistance should be made to someone you admire. Doing research in whether they are trustworthy and may have good chemistry with you is wise. Many times they will offer to pay you, but not always.

3/ My suggestion is the inverse of several things this article on mentors suggests. My approach doesn't involve preparing a job description for the mentor, making a cold ask for mentoring or holding then accountable with a structured mentorship agreement.hbr.org/2020/01/how-to…

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Tren Griffin

@trengriffin

18 Nov

1/ OG in SaaS is John Malone. He invented the modern cable business model. Of course he didn't invent the technology.

John talks about churn, ARPU and unit economics factors more than I do. That may be surprising but I learned from him and Craig McCaw.cnbc.com/video/2021/11/…

2/ If you invest in SaaS and listen to the interview, you might want to mentally substitute the word SaaS for cable. How he discusses issues like transfer pricing, bundling, scale, and overbuilding are just as applicable to SaaS.

If you see a transcript please forward it.

3/ Partial Transcript. cnbc.com/2021/11/18/cnb…

Global search and replace the world "cable" and insert "SaaS."

"The biggest threat has always been the stupid competitor with a lot of money coming into your business because they may not end up with much profitability." Malone

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Tren Griffin

@trengriffin

18 Nov

1/ "The possibility effect in the bottom left cell explains why lotteries are popular. When the top prize is very large, ticket buyers appear indifferent to the fact that their chance of winning is minuscule. A lottery ticket is the ultimate example of the possibility effect."

2/ "Without a ticket you cannot win, with a ticket you have a chance, and whether the chance is tiny or merely small matters little. Of course, what people acquire with a ticket is more than a chance to win; it is the right to dream pleasantly of winning.” Kahneman

3/ Humans "tend to overweight low-probability events. Imagine you have a 1 percent chance of winning $1 million, and you’ll know the outcome tomorrow. Subjects place a decision weight of 5.5 percent on a 1 percent objective probability." Mauboussin research-doc.credit-suisse.com/docView?langua…

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