Matthew Giampetroni
@matthewgiampetroni
Venture Capitalist at Velvet Sea Ventures
Matthew Giampetroni
If you buy or sell a security and expect an excess return, you should have a good answer to the question “Who is on the other side?” In effect, you are specifying the source of your advantage, or edge.
Michael Mauboussin • Who Is On the Other Side?
To get rich you need to get yourself in a situation with two things, measurement and leverage. You need to be in a position where your performance can be measured, or there is no way to get paid more by doing more. And you have to have leverage, in the sense that the decisions you make have a big effect.
Paul Graham • How to Make Wealth
Why do we treat the Royal Family with such reverence? Because ceremony demands it. Sometimes status is a closed circle, and if you trace it you end up where you started. The very act of walking in that circle, though, closes it. The Royal Family has whatever power the people grant them.
Eugene Wei • Smoke and Mirrors — Remains of the Day
the best stories to tell are the ones that have been told over and over again, and the stories of competitive mimesis and of deification followed by scapegoating are the oldest and best of all
Byrne Hobart • Manias and Mimesis: Applying René Girard’s Mimetic Theory to Financial Bubbles
In the very early-stages of a company, especially during a fundraise, narratives rule everything and pseudosecrets are the dominant way to build a narrative.
Michael Dempsey • Narratives & Pseudosecrets
Your primary objective should thus be to maintain the right filters for people and ideas so that the delicate ecosystem in your head is as resilient and flexible as possible
Graham Duncan Blog • Letter to a Friend Who May Start a New Investment Platform
Wealth is the fundamental thing. Wealth is stuff we want: food, clothes, houses, cars, gadgets, travel to interesting places, and so on. You can have wealth without having money.
Paul Graham • How to Make Wealth
People on the outside sometimes wonder why businesses with so few traditional assets seem to require so much financing. Well, they are accumulating assets: users are the new assets, and their use is what you’re out to monetize.Whatever your business model is, acquiring users is the new building factories.
Alex Danco • Debt is Coming
For the “I don’t know” school, on the other hand, the word – especially when dealing with the macro-future – is “guarded.” Its adherents generally believe you can’t know the future; you don’t have to know the future; and the proper goal is to do the best possible job of investing in the absence of that knowledge.