Matthew Giampetroni

The exceptional (sometimes criticized) margins at Louis Vuitton did not arise from excessively high prices, but from the removal of all costs and damages due to intermediaries. Louis Vuitton’s competitiveness

was therefore structural”

Execution at each core inflection point of a business enables continual narrative growth, and pseudosecret belief vs. erosion and doubt because in the end, narratives and pseudosecrets only accrue value to their relevant companies if they eventually become truths.

M&A is by far the largest source of redistribution of corporate resources among the capital allocation alternatives. M&A deals in 2021 totaled nearly $2.6 trillion, or 13.5 percent of sales. The chart shows that M&A tends to be cyclical. Early movers tend to do better than companies that buy later in the cycle.

Beyond deliberately architecting the people who surround you, the best way to control your mindset is to “own” the way you speak to yourself, what sports psychologists call your “self-talk”

As a founder, the most valuable optionality you have is the equity you haven’t sold, and the dilution you haven’t taken. But the second most valuable optionality you can have is a valuation that’s not too high. 

According to Kapferer, “luxury is superlative, not comparative”. The beauty of luxury is that no one can definitively say whether a Louis Vuitton bag is better than an Hermes bag because that concept doesn’t even make sense

Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it

in a world with infinite information and opportunity, you don’t grow by  knowing or doing more ,  you grow by the ability to correctly focus on less