My Uncertainty Principle.
I have a friend who slaps stickers that look like electrical outlets on airport walls when he travels, he then watches as people try to charge their phone.
Sometimes the fun is the value of something.
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In my life, I’ve lived with information being an uncertain well of change. It has consistently surprised me at how people can be so certain of how the world works, and use terms like “Always” or “Never” so triumphantly, as if the world has never changed before, and it won’t change again.
In my investment experience, great investments are determined emotionally when they strike a social chord that makes people feel compelled to: Disagree, laugh or debate about the moral implications. These concepts often live at the edge of long term social change that will happen, and will be massive.
When I was growing up, my generation was told not to waste our time playing video games, because you won’t get into a good school. Today there are scholarships for video games.
When I was growing up, you were told not to get into a strangers car. Today, Uber has made it ubiquitous to get into a strangers car.
Even in my adult life, “The government will never let you make your own currency.” and this year, Bitcoin has been welcomed with opened arms by the United States government.
There is also common advice around investing, that was correct for a time, however I’m not sure it was:
“Music isn’t a VC backable business”, and then Spotify happens.
“Games are hits driven”, so what, so is VC… So many games I wished I backed.
Certainty does give people comfort, and sometimes it makes the world more efficient to believe that things will continue to be true. However, I believe a great way to stumble onto a great investment thesis is to listen in conversations on where people say “Always” or “Never”, and then assume that the opposite will occur…. which it will.
The key is then to measure how big of an impact of that trend flipping will be, and then investing towards it.
If you find yourself energized by that change, it’s very fulfilling to invest towards that world, because Venture Capital at is base is about bringing the future here faster.
The moral debates I’m tending to see right now:
What use does the academic institution have?
Can scientific breakthroughs be created by non-academic “Scientists”
Should we live forever?
Should we bring back the dead?
There are many things that seem to be on the brink of being possible, that once were impossible.
> What use does the academic institution have?
Let me make a (bad) case for academic "freedom". If you take a professional knowledge services firm (say law) a new hire (even after graduating) is woefully inefficient/ inexperienced. If you want them to be productive you have to invest significant management & training time/resources. Now academia is one of those where within a 4 year grad degree, the 3rd years can actually transfer their experience to the younger cohort (the last year too busy with actual thesis writing). Without academia, this cost of upskilling needs either be apprenticeship (learn in return for bondage) or state subsidy to employers (cheaper to poach from other firms than internal). Academia follows the user-pay model so the cost of slacking off is borne by the trainee not trainer
Another use is credentials as signalling ... getting an MBA from Harvard is a shortcut to screening candidates (though imperfect). So reputation does have flowon effects. Note credentials can be replaced by industry bodies so not exclusive.
I'd ignore the social dimension of the MrS qualification.
For some more serious rational, studies show that 30s are the most creative period for researhers where they have enough foundation to get to the frontier of ignorance yet not rigid enough to follow conventional wisdom. PostDocs and similar hires get their breaks by working at cutting-edge fields. Another justification is innovation happens at intersection of domains, bioinformatics =genome project = biology + compsci database, lab-on-chip = microelectronics + biophysics. Academia have the breadth of fields that a single firm cannot host. Willingness to take punts or moon-shots, often breakthrus don't come with revenue forecasts ... eg early WiFi standards from astrophysics, WWW (httpd + html) from CERN, early DeSci from SETI citizen science project ...
As counterfactual, look at the rate of translational science success with Alphabet , 5th gen project under MITI or the sad state of chinese academic TT (sheesh, their solar panel tech was acquired from AU and fast train designs from Japan)
Never say never again. Interesting post @Adam Draper. Looking forward to more.