The better the investor, the simpler the questions. When I started, I was obsessed with jargon, complex questions and spreadsheets. Now I ask things like “what does it do?”, “why do people buy it?”, and “why are you selling?”. And I never do more math than I can fit on a napkin.
INTERVIEWER: As your experience about writing accrues, what would you say increases with knowledge?
BALDWIN: You learn how little you know. It becomes much more difficult because the hardest thing in the world is simplicity. And the most fearful thing, too. It becomes more difficult because you have to strip yourself of all your disguises, some of... See more
Let's put it this way: if you are a novelist, I think you start out with a 20 word idea, and you work at it and you wind up with a 200,000 word novel. We, picture-book people, or at least I, start out with 200,000 words and I reduce it to 20