I’ve been slacking this week (not the messaging app kind, the vacation kind).

Surprisingly I didn’t stock up on podcasts before leaving as I traditionally would, but I did bring some physical media to consume instead.

Plenty of topics to derive from one book so I’ll try that this time.

Ideas for this week:

• Never Enough

• The Warren Buffett Way

• Zero to One

• Acquisition

• Tiny World

Never Enough

After listening to Andrew Wilkinson’s podcast with Chris Williamson a few weeks ago, and given a recent rededication to working through my stacks of books I keep buying and not reading, I moved Never Enough: Barista to Billionaire to the top of the reading list after finishing Going Infinite and learning more about the FTX meltdown.

Being out of town this week was the perfect opportunity to dive in and so far, I have enjoyed Never Enough more than I expected.

Andrew’s journey parallels many of the topics I’ve covered in this newsletter so it’s a little weird to see some of these paths followed much further down the road.

I remember him mentioning he started writing the book with one idea in mind and ended up going in a completely different direction by the end of it, but I could see why.

It seems like he found the story he needed to tell and the book is all the better for it.

Time for some parallels.

The Warren Buffett Way

I would never have guessed that Andrew was thoroughly uninterested in investing, at least in the beginning.

The book starts with Andrew and his business partner Chris going to meet Charlie Munger, their business hero, but as Andrew recounts his early business days, he continually emphasizes how incredibly boring being an investor sounded to him.

After some success with a few of the businesses he started though, he realized he didn’t want to be in the day to day grind anymore, and though he should give investing another chance.

Picking up The Warren Buffet Way Andrew found that Warren had all the business answers he was looking for.

It’s interesting to hear that revelation because I’ve only recently made that connection myself, even though I’ve been indirectly heading down that path.

Investor is the ultimate form of “business”.

When I try to figure out where I’d like to end up, investor seems like the most appropriate title.

I’d rather not be in the day to day and I’m ok with trusting others to take the reins, I don’t need to constantly micro-manage or course correct.

Another point that Andrew brought up in his podcast that still resonates with me was embracing having varied interest by being a CEO for one company but investing in multiple others.

Being an investor is a great way to get to be involved in many different ideas but not having to dedicate your life to just one thing, or by strategically choosing to dedicate your life to one thing, investing, you get to be involved in many other things, which is basically what I’m looking for.

The picture is becoming clearer, but I may still pick up The Warren Buffet Way to see what else I missed as I carve my way down the investor path.

Zero to One

Andrew made a great comparison when he decided to prioritize investing over building companies.

He likened startups to sailing.

You need to get across the water, so you and your friends build a raft out of whatever you can find and set sail on your own, but it’s a struggle the entire way, holding on for dear life, trying to keep the boat together.

Or, if the ultimate goal is to get across the water, you could just hop on a cruise ship and get to the same destination.

It’s hard to skip the learned experience from building something from scratch, though.

You can’t gain experience from reading books, but if that experience isn’t necessary for the end goal, it might not be worth the time and effort.

Hopping on the cruise ship might make more sense.

The only obstacle there is the cost of the ticket…

Acquisition

As Andrew decided the investor life made more sense, he and his business partner used Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger principles to look for investing opportunities.

Admittedly, I had given up on the idea of value investing.

I really respect two of the greatest businessmen of all time, but I worried that times had changed.

There’s too much information publicly available these days and there’s too many smart people finding the missed opportunities - a concept called the efficient market hypothesis.

But, the problem with that thinking, which often is the trap, is that it’s static thinking.

Things don’t stay the same, they are constantly changing.

In fact, I’d say the rate of change is increasing, at least in terms of information exchange.

Which means new opportunities show up all the time, but they might not be available for nearly as long.

Andrew and Chris were running into this problem as well.

Technology moves fast so it’s hard to find investment opportunities that would be profitable in 5 years, let alone still in business in 5 years.

By combining Warren and Charlie advice with Andrew and Chris’s knowledge and expertise, they stick to investing in things they used personally or understand well.

Sticking to what you know is what I’ve been gravitating back toward in the last few issues so I’m glad to hear this is a solid approach with the potential to lead to some great outcomes.

The only problem with both the investor strategy and the acquisition strategy is having the capital to be able to jump into either of those plans.

The money has to come from somewhere which leads back to building or working.

Building will be the default option for me, but I’ll be keeping an eye out for any acquisition opportunities that are in my price range.

I still have an active acquire.com account so it may be time to set up a better system of identifying potential investing opportunities while I build my other income streams.

Tiny World

Part of what also caught me off guard, but in hindsight probably shouldn’t have, is seeing connections to names and companies I recognize but had no idea where related.

I knew Andrew started in the web design business with his company MetaLab, which was his first company, but I did not know that he helped design Slack when it first launched.

Andrew even mentioned how Stewart Butterfield offered stock as an early payment for MetaLab’s design work, and that that stock could have been worth potentially hundreds of millions of dollars after the Salesforce acquisition.

Weird to think I was working at Salesforce when they acquired Slack for $27 billion.

I liked Slack and I remember being very excited the day we were given company approval to switch from Google Chat to Slack as our daily messaging platform.

I had no idea Slack was originally designed by MetaLab.

Another interesting detail from the book was Andrew’s connection to Bill Ackman.

Andrew and his business partner Chris bid a large amount of money for to have lunch with Ackman.

I really enjoyed Lex Fridman’s episode with Bill Ackman so I may have to go back and listen to that one again since Ackman is one of Andrew and Chris’s investing idols and also partners.

Seeing these connections always reminds me I still need to build the podcast map and visually show this Tiny world.

It’s in the backlog of projects so hopefully I’ll get to it eventually, but first I need to finish reading Never Enough.

I still have 50 or so pages left, but clearly I’ve been enjoying, having written an entire newsletter about it.

I’d highly recommend it if you get the chance!

And that’s it for this week! Surprisingly no AI this week, but I did see OpenAI released their canvas feature so more on that next week once I get a chance to play it...

Those are the links that stuck with me throughout the week and a glimpse into what I personally worked on.

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