Markets, Markets, and Markets

Again, this doesn't have to be a deep multi-year fundamental understanding of a market. This often comes from an appreciation of reality as it is . The internet is growing 2,300% and it seems to have legs. Building infrastructure is really hard, and we've gotten really good at it.

Many investors saw the "death blow" to Amazon coming when the big established retailers started selling online. So while Amazon was born out of an initial appreciation for the growth of the internet, they stayed on top with execution. The ability to execute in an internet-native model vs. the transition big-box retailers were trying (and failing) t... See more

Valuation, growth, burn, and ambition are all a function of the size of the opportunity.

"dominating the present with insights."

I don't think of this as an affront to the idea that "no one can predict the future." It is, instead, a statement of belief. You're putting your capital and resources behind a future you believe in. Will Bezos' 2,300% internet growth be long-term? Or more volatile, like OpenSea's NFT volumes?

The power of large numbers is significant. If you earned $1,000 a day every day, it would take 1,000 days (or just under 3 years) to earn $1M. But it would take 1,000,000 days to earn $1B (over 2,700 years). 

The same can be said of markets. Understanding how big a market really is can be difficult. But the act of attempted futurism can have a clarifying effect on your perspective.

I use the word arbitrage because we're not talking about different markets in different geographies. We're talking about different markets that exist in different people's minds. If I can fundamentally understand, and believe in, a market more clearly than any other investors then my equation can change in ways that give me an advantage.

I'm a firm believer that founders are the people who can predict the future. --> "The best way to predict the future is to build it".

If you add a compounding effect on top of an already large number, it becomes very difficult to predict the size of future outcomes.