Dice. Magnets. Venture Capital. (Part 1 of 2)
Dice. Magnets. What more do you want from me?
Turns out that humans have been gamblers for thousands of years, the earliest known recollection of dice were cited by Sophocles being invented by Palamedes during the battle of Troy. There are citings in the bible of people playing with dice. Dice are a consistent representation of randomness and gaming.
Recently, I have been attempting to teach my daughter math. So I bought 60 dice…. It turns out I’m way more into this than she is.
Last night I rolled three dice 50 times. There were zero 3 of a kinds, so I thought, ‘Statistically when should I get 3 of a kind?“ Well two of a kind, its 6/36, so 3 of a kind would be 6/216. Which means it’s a 1/216 chance to get triple 6s… So a little less than 3% of the time you should roll triple numbers… so not often.
Dice are incredible. The more you roll them the closer they are to converting to their truth. If you roll 1 die 100 times, your outcomes will convert towards every number popping up 1 in 6. I don’t know why I find that so fascinating. It’s like the law of gravity, but dice. The dice will not diverge from this unspoken truth. There are 6 sides, and at any given time there is an equal chance of it landing on any of them. It’s like magic. The dice are attracted towards universal truths.
Another well known mystery hidden in plain sight are magnets. Magnets are used on childrens toys, they are used on iPhones, they are used the world around us to latch things or repel things. These lodestones are of the greatest magic known to man. Much of magnets is still unknown. Can you believe that?! if you dive deep into the research of these rocks that we frequent, no one knows how they work. Everything continues to say "They attract each other… magnetic fields” No explanation of how, the best explanation is about aligning of the valence electrons, which makes sense with an electro-magnet, but the standard magnets aren’t hooked up to electricity, yet have some infinite energy to attract and repel things.
Alright, but what the hell does this have to do with venture capital Adam?
You know what? Not everything has to do with venture capital. Sometimes things are just things. However, I am leading towards a theory on VC.
When I go to Vegas, people are always surprised to hear that I am not a gambler, or maybe it’s just my wife is surprised because as she says, “Your entire job is gambling on startups.” And I’ve never really been able to refute that. From the outside world that is so true, but just as dice migrate towards a truth and magnets attract, I know in my bones that the winners in venture keep winning, even though it starts with the roll of the dice, and there is something that Venture Capital has that a game of chance does not.