⁠Startup Archive
RT @olzare: Companies will slow down naturally. Takes a lot of effort to keep it fast.

Mark Zuckerberg explains why startups often beat big companies

“Large companies are slow and lack conviction.”

Mark wonders why a large company like Google didn’t beat Facebook in social networking:

“It wasn’t a super novel idea - there was Friendster and Myspace before… It’s not that they had a lack of talent - I mean we were a ragtag group of children and they had all these serious engineers and serious infrastructure.”

Mark thinks it’s because ”people doubt new ideas before they come to fruition.”

At first social networking was a fad service for college kids. When it decidedly wasn’t a fad, people were skill skeptical that was going to make money. Once it was making money, people thought the switch to mobile was going to be pretty hard. Then, once Facebook had figured all of these things out, it was too late for anyone - the incumbents had lost their advantage.

Mark speculates that there was probably a team deep inside these incumbents that believed in the idea of social networking, but a VP-level person ended up “pouring sand in the gears” because it wasn’t the highest priority.

“Even for things that look like they belong to large companies because they have a big distribution advantage, I would guess that big companies are going to fumble two thirds of those. And then there are all these things where there is not an apparent big advantage because it plugs into an existing distribution channel and those are just kind of free.”

Video source: @southpkcommons (2024) - Startup Archive
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⁠Startup Archive
RT @markselliott: "People doubt new ideas before they come to fruition"

Mark Zuckerberg explains why startups often beat big companies

“Large companies are slow and lack conviction.”

Mark wonders why a large company like Google didn’t beat Facebook in social networking:

“It wasn’t a super novel idea - there was Friendster and Myspace before… It’s not that they had a lack of talent - I mean we were a ragtag group of children and they had all these serious engineers and serious infrastructure.”

Mark thinks it’s because ”people doubt new ideas before they come to fruition.”

At first social networking was a fad service for college kids. When it decidedly wasn’t a fad, people were skill skeptical that was going to make money. Once it was making money, people thought the switch to mobile was going to be pretty hard. Then, once Facebook had figured all of these things out, it was too late for anyone - the incumbents had lost their advantage.

Mark speculates that there was probably a team deep inside these incumbents that believed in the idea of social networking, but a VP-level person ended up “pouring sand in the gears” because it wasn’t the highest priority.

“Even for things that look like they belong to large companies because they have a big distribution advantage, I would guess that big companies are going to fumble two thirds of those. And then there are all these things where there is not an apparent big advantage because it plugs into an existing distribution channel and those are just kind of free.”

Video source: @southpkcommons (2024) - Startup Archive
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⁠Startup Archive
RT @robinhanson: "Innovation" talk usually doesn't sufficiently distinguish inventors from diffusers. Historically, most innovation gains have been diffusion gains, not invention gains. People who do the different roles have different features too.

Marc Andreessen on the 5 personality traits of an innovator

“When you’re talking about real innovators—people who actually do really creative, breakthrough work—I think you’re talking about a couple things:”

1. Very high in trait openness. “Just flat-out open to new ideas… And the nature of trait openness means you’re not just open to new ideas in one category—you’re open to many different kinds of new ideas… But of course, just being open is not sufficient because if you’re just open, you could just be curious and explore and spend your entire life reading, talking to people, but never actually create something.”

2. High level of conscientiousness. “You need somebody who’s really willing to apply themselves—typically over a period of many years to accomplish something great… For most of these people, it’s years and years of applied effort. You need somebody with an extreme willingness to basically defer gratification… Of course, this is why there aren’t many of these people—there aren’t many people who are high in openness and high in conscientiousness because to a certain extent, they’re opposed traits.”

3. High in disagreeableness. “If they’re not ornery, they’ll be talked out of their ideas… Because the reaction most people have to new ideas is ‘Oh, that’s dumb.’ So, somebody who’s too agreeable will be easily dissuaded to not pull on the thread anymore.”

4. High IQ. “They just need to be really smart because it’s hard to innovate in any category if you can’t synthesize large amounts of information quickly.”

5. Relatively low neuroticism. “If they’re too neurotic, they probably can’t handle the stress.”

Video source: @hubermanlab (2023) - Startup Archive
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⁠Quiver Quantitative
RT @InsiderRadar: Two weeks ago, we reported on a new insider purchase at $COGT.

Since then, the stock has risen 22%, and is up 6.7% this morning. https://t.co/c6uadQoJmW

🚨BREAKING: New Insider Purchase

The Chief Commercial Officer of $COGT, a biotech company, has just reported purchasing $332k of the company's stock.

This is the first insider purchase we have ever seen him report. - Insider Radar
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⁠Stock Analysis Compilation
Greenlight Capital on Capri Holdings $CPRI US

Thesis: CPRI is a company we increased our position in despite a court blocking its merger, as we believe its interim poor results reflect management distraction and that there is strategic potential for recovery with its Versace and Jimmy Choo brands.

(Extract from their Q4 letter)
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⁠Dimitry Nakhla | Babylon Capital®
Knowing what NOT to invest in, is often MORE IMPORTANT than knowing what TO invest in
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AkhenOsiris
The sequel to "The Nvidia Way" will be called "The Nvidia Tax"
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⁠Investing visuals
$MSFT after earnings business breakdown: solid quarter, but down -6% nonetheless. Mr. Market is not impressed🤷‍♂️ https://t.co/ujOfHfzJaL
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⁠Quiver Quantitative
RFK Jr. just accused Bernie Sanders of taking over a million dollars on pharma money in his 2020 campaign.

Couple things to note from our data:

We have not seen Sanders take any money from any corporate PACs.

However, he raised a ton of money in 2020 and I would not be surprised if he was the largest congressional recipient of money from pharma employees in that cycle.
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⁠Investing visuals
$TSLA after earnings business breakdown: straight out bad quarter, but the market likes it!

Right now, $TSLA is all about future promises. A true story stock 🧐 https://t.co/XpgIwuFM2i
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⁠Stock Analysis Compilation
Greystone Capital on Limbach Holdings $LMB US

Thesis: Limbach’s strong acquisitions, margin expansion, and consistent growth make it a compelling investment with upside potential

(Extract from their Q4 letter) https://t.co/5PwpOOWu6o
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