Morgan Housel

咖啡银行与变化的速度 || The Coffee Bank and the Speed of Change

2025-11-04T17:44:00+00:00

像数以百万计的其他人一样，我一直在关注和使用OpenAI的新视频模型Sora——我不断思考技术如何经常超越许可的范畴。一周是咖啡应用，下 week 是由文本生成的电影世界。每一次创新最初都是便利，最终却改写了规则。星巴克原本无意成为金融机构。但每个时代的创新都会找到自己的方式来挑战规则。世界运转于规则之上。但规则依赖于文件、委员会和日程表。技术则依赖于好奇心和咖啡因。这种不匹配——人们构建的速度与机构回应的速度之间的差距——已成为现代生活的一个定义性力量。人们并非在违法，而是法律已经无法描述人们正在做的事情。《咖啡银行》星巴克是一家咖啡公司。但在金融方面，它也是美国最大的银行之一。客户集体持有的星巴克卡和应用中的预付余额接近20亿美元——超过美国85%的银行总存款额。这个转折点在于客户并未完全选择这种模式。当你用星巴克应用付款时，你不能简单地当场使用信用卡。你必须预先将钱存入账户。这个单一的设计选择——微妙、便利且完全有意——将每一杯拿铁的购买转化为小额存款。星巴克悄然成为了一家金融机构，却从未申请过银行牌照。这就是技术变革通常发生的方式：不是通过反抗，而是通过设计。从一个产品功能开始，逐渐成为监管盲点，最终演变为被接受的规范。《Uber先例》如果说星巴克代表了这种现象的微妙版本，那么Uber则是其喧闹、张扬的原型。 Uber为现代挑战监管边界的玩法编写了教科书。先推出，运营在灰色地带，让采用创造合法性。等到监管者反应时，公众意见——以及数十亿的乘客需求——已使逆转几乎不可能。 Uber真正的创新不仅仅是应用本身。它认识到，一旦技术达到一定规模，问题就从“这是否被允许”转变为“我们如何与之共存”。这种做法——快速行动，找到边界，让系统适应——已成为现代科技经济的默认操作系统。星巴克以自己的方式遵循了这一模式，加密货币网络、预测市场，以及现在的人工智能公司也如此。《Sora时刻》 OpenAI的新视频模型Sora可以从文本提示生成电影画面。这令人惊叹。但在这份惊叹背后，有一种熟悉的不适：它学习了谁的作品？该模型并未在孤立中发明其对运动、光线和叙事的理解。它吸收了这些——从由数百万未被询问、未被认可或未被补偿的人创作的电影、动画、设计和摄影中。公司坚称这是合法的，也许在现行法律下确实如此。但合法性和正当性并不相同。版权法并非为一个机器能吸收人类集体视觉记忆的时代而设计。它为一个“复制”意味着压纸或烧胶片的世界而制定。法律仍然使用所有权的语言，而技术现在使用吸收的语言。这种差距——在合法与正当之间——是权力悄然积累的地方。《法律无法以代码的速度行动》在历史上大部分时间，发明是瓶颈。如今，解释才是。监管者需要数年时间进行审议，而开发者只需数日时间进行迭代。等到规则跟上时，漏洞已变成了市场。我们仍然谈论监管，仿佛它定义了可能性的边界。但越来越多地，它只是描述了人们已经决定要做的事情。但接受和公平并不相同。仅仅因为某事规模扩大并不意味着它应该被允许。随着正式监管努力跟上步伐，非正式的监管已经介入：声誉、公众信任、用户反弹。它们比立法更快，但也更加脆弱。世界需要敢于挑战极限的建设者，但也要有原则，记住这些极限最初存在的原因。抹去它所依赖的人的进展并不是进展——而是掠夺。《未来总是始于灰色地带》每一次重大的进步都始于灰色地带。铁路、信用卡、互联网——所有都扭曲了旧规则，直到社会决定是重写它们还是接受后果。人工智能只是这一传统中的最新一环。挑战不在于阻止创新，而在于确保那些书写未来的人仍然对那些生活在其中的人保持责任感。未来并不总是要求许可，但也许它应该仍然要求同意。
---------------

Like millions of others, I’ve been watching and playing with OpenAI’s new video model, Sora—and I keep thinking about how often technology outpaces permission. One week it’s coffee apps; the next, it’s cinematic worlds spun from text. Each innovation starts as convenience and ends up rewriting the rules.

Starbucks didn’t mean to become a financial institution. But every era of innovation finds its own way to test the rules.

The world runs on rules. But rules run on paperwork, committees, and calendars. Technology, on the other hand, runs on curiosity and caffeine.

That mismatch—between how fast people can build and how slowly institutions can respond—has become one of the defining forces of modern life. It’s not that people are breaking the law; it’s that the law no longer describes what people are doing.

The Coffee Bank

Starbucks is a coffee company. But in financial terms, it’s also one of the largest banks in America. Customers collectively hold nearly $2 billion in prepaid balances on Starbucks cards and apps—more than 85 percent of U.S. banks hold in total deposits.

The twist is that customers didn’t entirely choose this setup. When you pay with the Starbucks app, you can’t simply use your credit card in the moment. You have to preload money into an account. That single design choice—subtle, convenient, and completely intentional—turned every latte purchase into a micro-deposit. Starbucks quietly became a financial institution without ever applying for a banking license.

This is how change usually happens in technology: not through rebellion, but through design. What begins as a product feature becomes a regulatory blind spot, and over time, an accepted norm.

The Uber Precedent

If Starbucks represents the subtle version of this phenomenon, Uber is its loud, brash archetype.

Uber wrote the modern playbook for testing the limits of regulation. Launch first, operate in the gray, and let adoption create legitimacy. By the time regulators react, public opinion—and billions in rider demand—make reversal almost impossible.

Uber’s true innovation wasn’t just the app itself. It was the recognition that once technology hits a certain scale, the question shifts from “Is this allowed?” to “How do we live with it?” That approach—move fast, find the edges, let the system adapt—has become the default operating system of the modern tech economy. Starbucks, in its own quiet way, followed it. So have crypto networks, prediction markets, and now, artificial intelligence companies.

The Sora Moment

OpenAI’s new video model, Sora, can generate cinematic footage from a text prompt. It’s astonishing. But behind that wonder lies a familiar discomfort: whose work did it learn from?

The model didn’t invent its sense of movement, light, and storytelling in isolation. It absorbed it—from films, animation, design, and photography created by millions of people who were never asked, credited, or compensated. The company insists this is legal, and perhaps under current law it is. But legality and legitimacy are not the same thing.

Copyright law wasn’t built for an era when a machine could absorb the collective visual memory of humanity. It was written for a world where “copying” meant pressing paper or burning film. The law still speaks the language of ownership. The technology now speaks the language of ingestion.

That gap—between what’s legal and what’s right—is where power quietly accumulates.

The Law Can’t Move at the Speed of Code

For most of history, invention was the bottleneck. Today, interpretation is. Regulators deliberate in years; developers iterate in days. By the time the rules catch up, the loophole has become the market.

We still talk about regulation as if it defines the edges of what’s possible. Increasingly, it just describes what people already decided to do. But acceptance and fairness are not the same thing. Just because something scales doesn’t mean it should.

As formal oversight struggles to keep pace, informal ones have stepped in: reputation, public trust, user backlash. They’re faster than legislation, but also more fragile.

The world needs builders bold enough to test limits, but principled enough to remember why those limits existed in the first place. Progress that erases the people it depends on isn’t progress—it’s extraction.

The Future Always Starts in the Gray

Every major leap forward begins in a gray area. Railroads, credit cards, the internet—all bent old rules until society decided whether to rewrite them or live with the consequences. Artificial intelligence is just the latest in that lineage.

The challenge isn’t stopping innovation; it’s ensuring that the people writing the future still feel accountable to the ones living in it. The future doesn’t always ask for permission. But maybe it should still ask for consent.

如果你有机会 || If You Get the Chance

2025-10-08T15:25:00+00:00

2006年获得金球奖后，菲利普·西摩·霍夫曼曾回答过一个关于他如何走到人生此刻的问题。近二十年后，他的回答比以往任何时候都更加贴切。 “即使你正在试镜一个你不喜欢或根本不可能获得的角色，只要有机会在一个别人付钱的房间里表演，那便是练习技艺的免费机会。在那一刻，你应该尽可能地发挥你的演技，因为一旦你离开那个房间，那些观看你表演的人绝不会忘记你。这就是我唯一的建议，因为一切始终围绕这一点——如果你有机会表演，就将那些台词赋予生命；如果你做到这一点，最终总会有所成就。” 这种心态解释了霍夫曼在短短两年内便出演了《Along Came Polly》中的桑迪·莱利和《Capote》中的特兰姆·卡波蒂，后者为他赢得了奥斯卡奖。退役的美国海军陆战队将军威廉·麦克雷文在他的著作《青蛙的智慧》中表达了类似的观点，他写道： “我发现，在我的职业生涯中，如果你对那些小任务感到自豪，人们就会认为你值得承担更大的任务。” 他用自己职业生涯初期的一个故事来说明这一点，当时他并没有被分配去领导任务，而是被指派制作一个代表海军陆战队员（通常被称为“蛙人”）的花车，参加七夕节游行。在接到任务后，麦克雷文坦言感到沮丧。在他看来，他加入海军陆战队是为了领导任务，而不是制作花车。但一位经验丰富的队友给了他一句安静的建议，说： “迟早我们都得做一些自己不想做的事情。但如果你要做，就把它做好。制作出最棒的蛙人花车。” 麦克雷文牢记这番话，全身心投入到任务中，最终花车赢得了该类别的第一名。随着时间的推移，麦克雷文后来领导了更具影响力的行动，包括指挥联合特种作战司令部（JSOC），并最终担任美国特种作战司令部（SOCOM）指挥官，该司令部统辖所有美国特种作战部队，包括海军陆战队、陆军绿色贝雷帽部队和空军特种救援部队。不幸的是，我在职业生涯早期并没有充分理解这一教训。例如，毕业后，我以为自己可以直接进入职场并传授我新获得的智慧，而我本应更专注于倾听并认真对待那些看似平凡的任务。幸运的是，我相信我并非唯一一个这样的人。如果我猜测正确，任何阅读这篇文章的人都能回忆起自己职业生涯中的类似时刻。事实上，这发生在我们每个人身上。即使是那些最优秀的人。只需看看汤姆·布雷迪，他曾在职业生涯初期承认自己深受这种心态影响。在大二赛季结束后，布雷迪在球队的深度榜上排名靠后，每次训练只能获得一两次传球机会。因此，他向教练表达了不满，当时主教练洛伊德·卡尔回应说： “布雷迪，我希望你停止担心球队其他球员在做什么。你只需专注于首发球员在做什么，二号球员在做什么，其他每个人在做什么。你不需要担心自己在做什么。你来到这里是为了成为最好的。如果你想成为最好的，就必须击败最好的。” 卡尔回建议布雷迪与体育部门的顾问格雷格·哈登会面。布雷迪再次倾诉了他的不满——抱怨自己获得的传球机会有限。哈登的建议很简单： “只需专注于你所能控制的事情，专注于你得到的那些两次传球机会，把它们做到最好。然后专注于下一次的两次，再下一次的两次，再下一次的两次。” 布雷迪是如何回应的？按照他的说法： “所以，我就是这么做的。他们让我进行两次传球，我就像在超级碗上一样全力冲刺。我会喊道：‘伙计们，开始吧！我们准备好了！这次是什么战术？！’我开始在这些两次传球中表现出色，因为我在其中投入了热情和精力。很快，我获得了四次传球机会，然后是十次。在Greg instilled in me的新心态下——专注于你能控制的事情，专注于你得到的机会，而不是其他人得到的。把每一次传球都当作超级碗来对待——最终，我成为了首发球员。” 我们都知道布雷迪的故事之后如何发展，一切始于两次传球。去年春天，我八岁的儿子在比赛中只能获得有限的上场时间，所以我给他读了这个关于布雷迪的故事。在沉默了几秒钟后，他抬起头看着我说：“汤姆·布雷迪也几乎没怎么上场吗？” 我回答道：“是的，小子，就像你一样。你只需要好好利用给你的一切机会。” 那天晚上离开他的房间后，我想到自己如果能回到过去告诉年轻的自己这一点，我愿意付出任何代价。我会听从建议吗？我希望如此，但如果这个概念对成年人来说都难以理解，我猜对孩子们来说就更加困难了。尽管如此，我希望我能在更早的时候理解这一点。事实是，几乎总有人在看着你，因此值得以目的和自豪的态度对待你所做的每一件事。而且，即使没有人注视着你，那仍然是一个“练习技艺”的机会。一个提升自我的机会。一个培养强大习惯的机会。由于时间有限，我们只有有限的机会。我们不妨好好利用每一个机会。
---------------

After winning a Golden Globe in 2006, Phillip Seymour Hoffman replied to a question about how he got to this moment in his life.

Nearly two decades later, his response is more relevant than ever.

“Even if you are auditioning for something you know you don’t like or are never going to get, whenever you get a chance to act in a room that someone else has paid for, it is a free chance to practice your craft. And in that moment, you should act as well as you can because if you leave that room and you have done this, there is no way the people who watched you will forget it. That is the only advice I have because it is always about that — if you are given the chance to act, take those words and bring them alive; and if you do that, something will ultimately transpire.”

This mindset explains how within two years, Hoffman played Sandy Lyle in Along Came Polly and Truman Capote in Capote, winning an Oscar for the latter.

Retired United States Navy General William McRaven echoed a similar sentiment in his book, The Wisdom of the Bullfrog, writing,

“I found in my career that if you take pride in the little jobs, people will think you worthy of the bigger jobs.”

He illustrated this point with a story from early in his career when rather than being assigned to lead a mission, he was tasked with building a float that would represent the Navy SEALs (often referred to as “frogmen”) in the Fourth of July parade.

After receiving the assignment, McRaven was admittedly dejected. In his mind, he had joined the Navy SEALs to lead missions, not build parade floats. But a seasoned team member offered him a quiet piece of advice, saying:

“Sooner or later we all have to do things we do not want to. But if you are going to do it, do it right. Build the best damn Frog Float you can.”

McRaven took the message to heart, pouring himself into the task and the float went on to win first prize in its category.

Over time, McRaven would lead far more consequential missions, including commanding the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) and later the U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM), which oversees all U.S. special operations forces, including the Navy SEALs, Army Green Berets, and Air Force Pararescue.

Unfortunately, I didn’t appreciate this lesson enough early in my career. As an example, after graduating from business school, I thought I could come right in and impart my newly found wisdom, when I should have been a better listener and executed the mundane tasks with as much vigor as the more interesting ones.

Fortunately, I don’t think I am alone. If I had to guess, anyone reading this can point to a similar moment in their career.

The thing is, this happens to all of us. Even the very best.

Look no further than Tom Brady, who has admitted he was consumed by this mentality early in his career at Michigan.

After his sophomore season, Brady was buried on the depth chart, only getting one or two reps per practice. As a result, he expressed his frustration to the coaches, to which head coach Lloyd Carr responded,

“Brady, I want you to stop worrying about what all the other players on our team are doing. All you do is worry about what the starter is doing, what the second guy is doing, what everyone else is doing. You don’t worry about what you are doing. You came here to be the best. If you’re going to be the best, you have to beat out the best.”

Carr then suggested Brady meet with Greg Harden, a counselor in the athletic department.

Once again, Brady vented his frustration — complaining about getting limited reps.

Harden’s advice was simple:

“Just focus on doing the best you can with those two reps. Make them as perfect as you possibly can. Then focus on the next two, and the next two, and the next two.”

How did Brady respond?

In his words,

“So, that’s what I did. They would put me in for those two reps, and man, I would sprint out there like it was the Super Bowl. I’d shout, ‘Let’s go boys! Here we go! What play we got?!?’ And I started to do really well with those two reps because I brought enthusiasm and energy. Soon, I was getting four reps. Then ten, and before you knew it, with this new mindset that Greg had instilled in me — to focus on what you can control, to focus on what you’re getting, not what anyone else is getting. To treat every rep like it’s the Super Bowl — eventually, I became the starter.”

We all know how Brady’s story played out from here, and it all started with two reps.

Last spring, my then eight-year-old son was wrestling with getting to play very limited minutes, so I read him this story about Brady. After sitting in silence for a few seconds, he looked up at me and said, “Tom Brady barely played too??”

To which I responded, “Yeah bud, like you. You just gotta make the best of your chances you’re given.”

After leaving his room that night, I thought to myself — I would give just about anything to be able to go back in time and tell my younger self this.

Would I have listened?

I hope so, but if this is a hard concept for adults to grasp, I imagine it’s even more difficult for kids.

Nonetheless, I wish I had appreciated this fact of life earlier. The fact is, someone is almost always watching, so it’s worth treating everything you do with purpose and pride. And, even if no one has their eyes on you, it is still a chance to “practice your craft”. To improve. To build strong habits.

Since time is limited, we only get so many opportunities.

We might as well take advantage of each one we get.

重返校园 || Back to School

2025-09-17T21:52:00+00:00

新学年的开始是每个孩子生命中的独特时刻。一个充满期待的时刻，同时也伴随着同等程度的紧张与兴奋。他们的父母也一样，这就是为什么我被一位小学负责人在返校夜写给家长的建议清单所打动。

家长们，

以下是一些即将到来的新学年建议：

尽量保持对孩子的客观态度，并现实地看待他们的期望。我们并不是说要减少对孩子的爱，而是要以现实的方式看待他们的优点和局限。
充分了解孩子的情况，并开放接受他人的观察。老师和教练等可以为您提供宝贵的信息，您需要花时间去倾听。
将“坏消息”视为需要处理的问题，不要过度反应。保持冷静并思考！请记住，即使我们这些父母在成长过程中也犯过一些错误。
仔细倾听孩子的话，但要区分倾听与认同。孩子们擅长表达观点，但不要轻易将孩子的观点等同于“真相”。
为孩子留出一些未安排的时间。您会惊讶地发现，有多少孩子似乎只有在被安排好一切时才能做任何事。请记住过去的日子，那时我们需要自己决定如何安排时间。
在育儿过程中，要保持一致性，并且父母双方要齐心协力。不要空洞地威胁，也不要让孩子们在父母之间挑拨离间。

我们的主要目标是帮助孩子成长为一个聪明、有思想、有同情心、能为社会做贡献的成年人——一个多年后能够对自己说：“我有能力做出明智的决定，并独立克服困难。” 您在过程中所做的决定，可能会增强或削弱实现这一目标的可能性。

对于任何读到这篇文章的家长来说，这些建议可能都会引起共鸣。对我而言，至少是这样。

现在，如果让我告诉你们一个小秘密，你们会怎么想？

如果我告诉你们，这篇文章写于1992年，你们会有什么反应？

我坦白说，当我第一次读到它时，既感到惊讶又感到欣慰。惊讶是因为它几乎就是我预期2025年一位学校负责人会向家长提出的建议。欣慰是因为它提醒我们，随着时间推移，唯一不变的是人类的行为。

虽然这份清单是关于如何育儿的，但它同样适用于生活中的许多其他方面——包括商业和投资。

#1 — 保持客观并现实地看待期望

家长们几代人都在与这个挑战作斗争，而且很可能永远都会如此。我们自然希望为孩子提供最好的，也希望他们能有所成就。然而，事实是，真正的卓越是例外，而非常态。然而，认识到这一点比以往任何时候都更困难。

原因是什么？

部分原因在于社交媒体精心挑选的片段，比如孩子们进球、考试拿高分、掌握乐器和赢得奖项的画面，让家长觉得自己的孩子落后了。于是他们增加了更多的辅导、补习和专业化训练，不幸的是，这更有可能导致疲惫，而不是卓越。

如今许多投资者也正经历类似的问题，这体现在风险投资、杠杆ETF和加密货币等高风险投资的流行，以及越来越多的人陷入“快速致富”的骗局。

为什么？

原因与家长们失去客观性相同。无论是看到杰夫·贝索斯在游艇上，还是《名城真豪门》中的女性，或者社交媒体上人们在异国度假的照片，许多人感觉在过去十年中错失了巨大的回报，现在试图弥补。

这正是已故的查理·芒格所说的：“不是贪婪推动世界，而是嫉妒。”

问题是，当人们在这个周期阶段采取过度冒险的行动时，几乎总是以失败告终。

#2 — 保持充分了解并开放接受反馈

“充分了解”似乎意味着与过去不同的东西，这在很大程度上是由于信息传播的速度加快。对家长来说，过去意味着知道孩子的大致行踪，并信任他们会在天黑前回家。现在，它却意味着通过GPS追踪他们的每一个行动。至于接受反馈的开放性，由于现在许多人容易感到冒犯，老师和教练往往犹豫是否提供反馈，这阻碍了孩子的成长。

对投资者来说，过去意味着多读书并了解世界的发展方向。如今，它却常常意味着通过推特和彭博社等渠道实时了解每时每刻发生的事情。不幸的是，这种信息洪流使许多人“只见树木不见森林”，导致投资组合的频繁调整和更差的表现。

#3 — 将“坏消息”视为需要处理的问题，不要过度反应

无法接受差成绩是生活的一部分，导致了教育史上最大的过度反应之一——成绩膨胀。

结果是什么？

没有人真正了解孩子们的表现，特别是大学和雇主。因此，为了获得录取，孩子们感到必须通过其他方式来突出自己，于是他们参加无数课外活动。然而，GPA依然比以往任何时候都高。

投资者同样不喜欢坏消息，只不过我们尝试用流动性不足来解决公开市场负面新闻带来的波动。问题在于，波动往往能创造最好的投资机会，至少对那些能够利用它的人而言。鉴于流动性不足的追求已经如此普遍，我们才刚刚开始看到其副作用。

#4 — 倾听仔细，但区分倾听与认同

倾听与认同是截然不同的两件事。我个人有九岁和七岁的孩子，他们越来越喜欢夸大事实，因此我倾听得比认同得多。但我想，随着他们年龄的增长，这种区分会更加微妙。在我的经验中，最好的投资者会倾听每个人的意见，但原因可能与您想象的不同——他们倾听是为了了解当前的共识。一旦了解，他们往往会转向相反的方向……即不认同。

#5 — 为孩子留出一些未安排的时间

所有人都知道我们的孩子被安排得太满了（参见成绩膨胀的后果）。毕竟，如果进入顶尖大学或获得理想的第一份工作是“终极目标”，而且只有通过无休止的活动才能实现，您还能期望什么呢？然而，孩子们比以往任何时候都更加疲惫、焦虑和压力重重。

至于市场，摩根·豪斯尔经常说，他最好的思考往往发生在散步的时候。没有iPhone，没有播客，没有音乐，只有他自己在行走。试试看。

#6 — 育儿时要保持一致性

作为一名父亲，我必须承认自己在这方面并不出色。我有时会威胁惩罚——“如果你不停止这样做，我们就离开！”——但随后又收回威胁，很可能是因为我自己并不想离开。问题是，我的孩子已经察觉到了这一点，这成了一个问题，因为他们像克林特·伊斯特伍德在《致命武器》中那样，现在开始质疑我的威胁。

大多数投资者在这方面同样表现不佳。他们今天是价值投资者，明天又变成成长型投资者。今天是主动管理的粉丝，明天又转向被动投资。今天热爱私募股权，明天又退出。无论如何，通往成功的最可靠路径是保持一致性。选择一个策略并坚持下去。不要反复无常，尤其是在现在这个时刻。如果您过去十年一直持有国际股票，我不会建议您现在抛售。如果您最近才涉足私募股权并考虑配置，请确保您有能力长期维持新的承诺。如果您考虑削减任何剩余的商品或能源敞口，我实际上可能会考虑增加。

那么，这对我们意味着什么？

事实是，尽管我们告诉自己现在与几十年前大不相同，但现实并非如此。当然，世界变得更快、更嘈杂、更具竞争性，但良好生活或稳健投资组合的核心原则并没有改变。事实上，这些原则可能比以往任何时候都更加重要。正如这位小学负责人所建议的那样——控制好期望，充分了解（但不过度了解），避免过度反应，仔细倾听，并保持一致性。纸上简单，实践中困难。但无疑具有永恒的价值。

对于所有家长和孩子，祝你们新学年好运。我知道我需要。

对于投资者，我也要说同样的话——祝你们好运……我们都需要。

---------------

The beginning of a new school year is a unique time in every kid’s life. A time full of expectations, and equal amounts of trepidation and excitement. The same could be said for their parents, which is why I was struck by this list of suggestions that a lower school head wrote for a back-to-school night.

Parents,

A few suggestions for the upcoming school year:

Try to remain objective about your child and realistic about your expectations. We are not talking here about loving your child any less — just about viewing his strengths and limitations in a realistic way.
Keep yourself well-informed and open to the observations of others about your child. Such people as teachers and coaches can provide you with valuable pieces of information, and you need to take the time to listen.
Accept “bad news” as a problem to be dealt with. Do everything you can to keep yourself from overreacting. Keep calm and think! Remember that even we parents have made a mistake or two along the way.
Listen carefully to your children, but make the distinction between listening to them and agreeing with them. Kids are good at conveying a perspective. Don’t succumb to the temptation to equate the child’s perspective with “the truth.”
Leave the child some unscheduled time. You would be surprised to see the number of kids who can’t seem to do anything unless it’s been planned and scheduled for them. Remember the old days when we had to determine for ourselves some of the things we were going to do with our time.
Act consistently over time; and, mothers and fathers, act together. Don’t make empty threats. Don’t let children play off one parent against the other.

Our main goal is to help your child develop into an intelligent, thoughtful, compassionate, contributing adult — a person who years from now is able to say to themselves: “I have the capacity to make sound decisions and to work through obstacles on my own.” The decisions you make along the way can serve either to enhance or reduce the probability that the goal will be reached.

For any parent who read this, it probably resonated. It did for me at least.

Now, what if I let you in on a little secret?

What if I told you this was written in 1992??

I’ll be honest, when I first read it, I was both surprised and relieved. Surprised because it is almost exactly what I would expect a head of school to suggest for parents in 2025. Relieved because it is a reminder that one thing that never changes over time is human behavior.

While this list pertains to how we parent our kids, it could apply to many other things in life — including business and investing.

#1 — Remain objective and realistic about your expectations

Parents have wrestled with this challenge for generations, and likely always will. It’s only natural to want the best for our children, and to want the best from them as well. Yet the truth is, true greatness is the exception, not the rule. However, recognizing that reality feels harder today than ever before.

The reason?

In part because social media’s curated clips of kids scoring goals, acing tests, mastering instruments, and winning awards convince parents that their own kids are lagging. They subsequently pile on more coaching, tutoring, and specialization, which unfortunately has a better chance of breeding burnout than greatness.

Many investors today are suffering from something similar, evidenced by the rise in the popularity of riskier investments like private equity, leveraged ETFs, and crypto, while others are increasingly falling for “get-rich-quick” schemes.

Why?

For the same reasons parents lose their objectiveness. Whether it’s seeing Jeff Bezos on his yacht, the women in The Real Housewives of Name that City, or social media photos of people on vacation in exotic locales, many people feel they have missed out on the outsized returns over the past decade and are trying to catch up.

This is precisely the reason the late Charlie Munger said, “it’s not greed that drives the world, it’s envy.”

The trouble is that when people take outsized risks at this stage of a cycle, it almost always doesn’t end well.

#2 — Stay well-informed and open to observations

Being “well-informed” seems to mean something different than it used to, in large part due to the speed at which information travels. For parents, it used to mean knowing their kids’ general whereabouts and trusting they’d be home by dark. Now, it involves tracking their every move with GPS. As for openness to feedback, since many now take offense, teachers and coaches often hesitate to provide it, hindering kids’ growth.

For investors, it used to mean being well-read and having a good sense of where the world was headed. Today, it too often means being aware of what is happening every minute of every hour of every day through outlets like Twitter and Bloomberg. Unfortunately, this deluge of information has made many “miss the forest for the trees,” leading to increased turnover and worse performance.

#3 — Accept “bad news” as a problem to be dealt with and don’t overreact

An inability to accept that bad grades are a part of life has led to one of the greatest overreactions in the history of education — grade inflation.

The result?

No one knows how kids are truly doing, notably colleges and employers. As a result, to gain admission, kids feel like they need to differentiate themselves in other ways, so they overload on countless activities outside of school. Yet, GPAs are still higher than ever.

Investors hate bad news too, only instead of grade inflation, we have experimented with illiquidity as a solution to the volatility created by negative headlines in public markets. The problem is, volatility is often what creates the best investment opportunities, at least for those able to take advantage of it. Given this push for illiquidity has become so widespread, we are just beginning to witness the side effects.

#4 — Listen carefully, but make the distinction between listening and agreeing

Listening and agreeing are vastly different things. Personally, with a nine- and seven-year-old at home who have been increasingly stretching the truth, I do a lot more listening than agreeing, but I imagine this will get more nuanced the older they get. In my experience, the best investors listen to everyone, but for a different reason than you might expect — they listen in order to determine what the current consensus is. Once they do, they often start leaning the other way…i.e., they don’t agree.

#5 — Leave the child some unscheduled time

Everyone knows our kids are overscheduled (see the consequence of grade inflation). After all, when getting into the best college or being offered a great first job is the “end-all-be-all” and only possible with endless activities, what do you expect? Yet, kids are more overwhelmed, anxious, and stressed out than ever.

As for markets, Morgan Housel has often said that his best thinking occurs when he goes for a walk. No iPhone. No podcasts. No music. Just himself walking. Try it.

#6 — Act consistently over time when parenting

As a dad, I will fully admit that I am not great at this. I have been known to threaten a punishment – “we’re leaving if you don’t stop doing that!” – but then back down, likely because I personally don’t want to leave. The problem is my kids have caught onto this and it’s a problem because like Clint Eastwood in Sudden Impact, they now call my bluff.

Most investors are equally poor at this. They are value investors one day, growth the next. Fans of active managers today, and passive tomorrow. In love with private equity, then out of it. Either way, the most reliable path to success is consistency. Pick one strategy and stick to it. Don’t flip flop, especially now. If you’ve held international equities for the past decade, I wouldn’t bail now. If you’re late to the game on private equity and considering an allocation, make sure you’re capable to sustaining new commitments for years to come. If you’re thinking about scrubbing any commodity or energy exposure you have left, I actually might consider adding instead.

So where does this leave us?

The fact is, as much as we tell ourselves that things are vastly different than they were a few decades ago, the reality is they aren’t. Sure, the world is faster, noisier, and more competitive, but the core tenets of a good life — or a resilient portfolio — haven’t changed. In fact, they might matter more than ever. Namely, as this lower school head suggested — keep your expectations in check, stay well-informed (but not too informed), avoid over-reacting, listen carefully, and remain consistent. Simple on paper. Hard in practice. Timeless for sure.

For all parents and kids out there, good luck in the new school year. I know I’ll need it.

For investors, I’ll say the same thing — good luck…we all need it.

我的新书：花钱的艺术 || My New Book: The Art of Spending Money

2025-09-03T17:59:00+00:00

我的新书《花钱的艺术》将在下个月出版。您可以在下面预购这本书。投资者克里斯·戴维斯——伯克希尔·哈撒韦和可口可乐董事会成员——表示，这本书“与其说是续集，不如说是对我首本书《金钱心理学》的精湛、奥斯卡级别的完美收尾”。我写这本书是因为我发现关于如何积累财富的建议有很多，但关于如何使用财富的却几乎没有。这本书不叫《花钱的科学》，因为我并不认为存在这样的东西。我更感兴趣的是花钱的艺术。艺术无法被简化成一个适用于所有人的公式。艺术是复杂的，常常是矛盾的，涉及诸如个性、贪婪、嫉妒、地位和遗憾等话题。这就是这本书的主题。现在，我认为你可以用金钱来创造更好的生活。我认为购买美好的东西能带给你快乐。我热爱雄心、努力工作，尤其是独立。但在我写了二十年关于金钱的内容后，我不断惊讶于大多数人对金钱的渴望和使用方式是多么糟糕。我们很少清楚自己真正想要什么，也很少知道如何将金钱用于比衡量地位和成功更重要的事情。我试图从多个角度探讨花钱的艺术。但你会发现，这本书有几个共同的主题：

使用金钱有两种方式。一种是作为工具，用来过上更好的生活；另一种是作为衡量地位的标尺，用来与他人比较。许多人渴望前者，却一生都在追逐后者。

金钱是一种你可以使用的工具。但如果你不加小心，它会反过来利用你。它会毫不留情地利用你，而且常常在你毫无察觉的情况下发生。对许多人来说，金钱是财务资产，却是一种心理负担。盲目渴望更多可能会劫持你的身份，控制你的个性，并挤占那些能带来更大快乐的生活部分。

花钱可以买到幸福，但通常是间接的途径。金钱本身并不能带来幸福，但它可以帮助你找到独立和目标——如果你能培养这些，它们就是幸福生活的重要组成部分。一座大而漂亮的房子可能让你更快乐，但主要是因为它更容易让朋友和家人来访，而真正让你快乐的是朋友和家人。

持久的幸福源于知足，因此那些在金钱方面最幸福的人往往是那些已经找到方法不再过度思考金钱的人。你可以重视它、欣赏它，甚至惊叹它。但如果你总是把金钱挂在心上，它很可能已经变成了你的执念，控制了你。金钱最好的用途是作为你实现自我的工具，而不是定义你是什么的工具。

如果你不清楚更好的生活是什么样子，“拥有更多金钱”的生活是一种容易做出的假设。但有时这可能掩盖了更深层的问题。金钱如此具体，因此成为了一个容易追求的目标，而追求它可能成为那些尚未发现真正滋养灵魂的生活方式的最容易走的路。

每个人都可以用金钱的方式让自己更快乐。但没有一个适用于所有人的通用公式。让我感到快乐的东西可能在你看来很疯狂，反之亦然。关于你应该如何生活的话题争论，往往只是不同性格的人互相争执。作者卢克·伯吉斯用另一种方式表达：“在满足基本需求之后，我们进入人类欲望的世界。而知道想要什么比知道需要什么更难。”

这本书将于10月7日出版。希望您喜欢阅读它。
---------------

My new book, The Art of Spending Money, comes out Oct 7th.

You can buy it here.

Investor Chris Davis – who serves on the board of Berkshire Hathaway and Coca-Cola – says, it’s “not so much a sequel as the masterful, Oscar-worthy completion of” my first book, The Psychology of Money.

I wrote this book because I found there to be too much advice on building wealth but almost none on what to do with it.

This book is not called The Science of Spending Money because I don’t think such a thing exists. I’m more interested in the art of spending money. Art can’t be distilled into a one-size-fits all formula. Art is complicated, often contradictory, and covers things like individuality, greed, jealousy, status, and regret.

That’s what this book is about.

Now, I think you can use money to build a better life.

I think buying nice stuff can bring you joy.

I love ambition, hard work, and – most of all – independence.

But after writing about money for two decades, I am constantly amazed at how bad most of us are at knowing what we want out of money, or how to use it as anything more than a benchmark of status and success.

I try to tackle the art of spending money from several angles. But you’ll find a few common denominators in this book:

There are two ways to use money. One is as a tool to live a better life. The other is as a yardstick of status to measure yourself against others. Many people aspire for the former but spend their life chasing the latter.
Money is a tool you can use. But if you’re not careful, it will use you. It will use you without mercy, and often without you even knowing it. For many people, money is a financial asset but a psychological liability. Blind lust for more can hijack your identity, control your personality, and wedge out parts of your life that bring greater happiness.
Spending money can buy happiness, but it’s often an indirect path. Money itself doesn’t buy happiness, but it can help you find independence and purpose – both key ingredients for a happier life if you cultivate them. A big, nice house might make you happier, but mostly because it makes it easier to have friends and family over, and the friends and family are actually what are making you happy.
Enduring happiness is found in contentment, so those happiest with money tend to be those who have found a way to stop thinking about it. You can value it, appreciate it, even marvel at it. But if money never leaves your mind it’s likely you’ve found yourself with an obsession, where it controls you. The best use of money is as a tool to leverage who you are, but never to define who you are.
If you’re confused about what a better life would look like, “one with more money” is an easy assumption. But that can sometimes mask deeper problems. Money is so tangible that it’s an easy goal to strive for, and pursuing it can become the path of least resistance for those who haven’t discovered what truly feeds their soul.
Everyone can spend money in a way that will make them happier. But there is no universal formula on how to do it. The nice stuff that makes me happy might seem crazy to you, and vice versa. Debates over what kind of lifestyle you should live are often just people with different personalities talking over each other. Author Luke Burgis puts it another way: “After meeting our basic needs as creatures, we enter into the human universe of desire. And knowing what to want is much harder than knowing what to need.”

The book comes out October 7th. I hope you enjoy reading it.

舒适的代价 || The Cost of Comfort

2025-09-02T15:24:00+00:00

2025年PGA巡回赛在本周末圆满落幕，汤米·弗利特伍德在亚特兰大东湖高尔夫球场赢得巡回赛冠军，谱写了一段精彩的翻身故事。这是他自八年前加入巡回赛以来的首个冠军，也带来了职业生涯中最大的一笔收入（1000万美元）。本周末也标志着LIV高尔夫赛季的结束，自沙特阿拉伯四年前推出该巡回赛并挖走多位PGA巡回赛的顶级球星以来，这已是LIV高尔夫的第四年。这引发了一个问题——尽管像弗利特伍德这样选择留在PGA巡回赛的球员们持续表现出色，但那些跳槽到LIV高尔夫的球员们表现如何呢？以大满贯赛事作为成功衡量标准，答案是——最坏的情况。因此，LIV高尔夫成为了一个案例研究，说明了仅仅参加比赛就能获得改变人生的财富会带来怎样的后果。这些教训远远超出了高尔夫运动的范畴。 LIV高尔夫于2021年推出，旨在多样化沙特阿拉伯依赖石油的经济结构并提升其全球形象。然而，它跳过了自然发展的过程，而是选择通过向顶级PGA球员提供巨额、有保障的合同来迅速获得关注：琼·拉姆（3亿美元）菲尔·米克尔森（2亿美元）布鲁克斯·科普卡（1.3亿美元）达斯汀·约翰逊（1.25亿美元）布莱森·德尚博（1.25亿美元）卡梅隆·史密斯（1亿美元）李·维斯特伍德（4000万美元）帕特里克·里德（3500万美元）通过这种方式，LIV高尔夫颠覆了职业高尔夫的激励机制。这是如何发生的呢？因为在PGA巡回赛上，收入取决于表现——要“入账”，你至少必须晋级。而LIV巡回赛的合同则无论比赛结果如何都保证支付。因此，一个合乎逻辑的问题是——这种新的激励机制对表现产生了怎样的影响？表现悖论虽然有少数例外（尤其是布莱森·德尚博和琼·拉姆），但大多数球员的表现确实有所下滑。考虑一下PGA巡回赛上在加入LIV之前和之后表现最突出的几位前球星：达斯汀·约翰逊——在离开PGA巡回赛之前，约翰逊世界排名第二，曾在大满贯赛事中取得四次前十名（包括两次前三名）的成绩，并在2020年赢得了大师赛。加入LIV之后，他在过去八次大满贯赛事中有五次未能晋级。根据Data Golf的排名，他目前的世界排名为第120位。卡梅隆·史密斯——史密斯同样曾世界排名第二，在大满贯赛事中取得六次前十名的成绩，并在2022年圣安德鲁斯英国公开赛上夺冠。此后，史密斯在过去八次大满贯赛事中有四次未能晋级，目前世界排名为第92位。最近，在2025年美国公开赛（奥克蒙特球场）中，有14名LIV球员参赛，其中只有6人成功晋级，而那些晋级的球员在周日的决赛轮中都显得无关紧要。那么，是什么导致了这种下滑呢？有些人指出LIV高尔夫较弱的竞争环境、较小的观众群体以及全球旅行的负担。但更简单的答案在于人性——突如其来的、有保障的财富可能会削弱你的动力和驱动力，使你在过程中变得过于安逸和自满。但，你是否要责怪他们呢？诚实点……如果有人明天就给你1亿美元，仅仅是为了到场，你还会继续在练习场练到日落，反复击球直到手心起茧，并且半数时间都带着行李箱生活吗？可能不会。初步结论根据这些数据，我最初得出的结论是，获得有保障的巨额收入会使保持动力变得非常困难。要维持纪律、持续努力，因此表现下滑并不令人意外。不过，为了确认这一点，我查阅了其他几项体育运动的情况。我发现了一些令人惊讶的结果。我首先搜索了： “团队体育历史上最糟糕的合同” 这产生了大量列表，主要包含因伤病而表现不佳的球员，而非缺乏努力的球员——比如MLB的迈克·特鲁，NFL的德尚博·沃森，NHL的里克·迪皮特罗，以及NBA的阿伦·休斯顿。我有点惊讶，于是随后搜索了： “团队体育中当前最高的有保障合同” 结果包括像NFL的乔什·艾伦、NBA的斯蒂芬·库里以及MLB的布莱斯·哈珀这样的球员，他们目前仍在顶级水平上竞技。这表明我最初的理论可能有误，或者至少不完整，这又引发了一个问题——为什么这些有保障的合同对这些运动员产生了与LIV高尔夫球员截然不同的影响？我得出的结论是，这很可能归结为责任感。在团队体育中，运动员需要对队友和教练负责。他们每天都要在更衣室、 clubhouse 或 huddle 中面对他们。他们的成功或失败直接影响他人的表现，进而影响他人的生活。而在高尔夫运动中，球员只需对自己的表现负责。结果？缺乏对他人的责任感，自满更容易迅速出现。那又如何？这种动态不仅适用于体育领域，事实上，我们正在金融市场上看到类似的现象，其影响可能非常重大。事实是，近15年来，无数资产类别都经历了持续的牛市，这可能使许多投资者和公司变得过于安逸。从股票（包括公开和私人）到房地产、贵金属、私人信贷、高收益债券以及加密货币，任何具有“风险溢价”的资产都大幅上涨。结果是，无论是个人还是机构，总金融资产都出现了显著增长。总金融资产——家庭和非营利组织（Statista）：与此同时，失业率保持低位，信用利差依然紧缩，利润率也维持在高位。那么，我们目前处于什么境地？处于一个不适宜过于安逸的环境。需要采取团队合作的心态。要像乔什·艾伦和斯蒂芬·库里那样，而不是像达斯汀·约翰逊和卡梅隆·史密斯那样。要认真考虑谁依赖你以及你所管理的投资组合（或业务），无论是你的公司、客户、同事、投资者、合作伙伴还是家人。这意味着要意识到，你的投资组合（或业务）的成功很可能受益于非常强劲的顺风，但现在却变得脆弱，那些收益可能在眨眼之间蒸发。此时，重新平衡投资组合并考虑将资金重新配置到更便宜、风险更低或目前不受欢迎的资产（或业务部分）可能是明智之举。在你所投资的公司或基金方面，寻找那些具有强大文化、股权广泛分散，并且有历史记录表明其能够应对周期波动的公司。那些在困难时期面对员工并带领他们度过难关的领导者。例如，摩根大通CEO杰米·戴蒙，他带领公司度过了金融危机，比任何人都做得更好，并解释了部分原因，他说： “我们的客户知道我们会在他们身边，稳定可靠，为他们做好工作，并且我们因此获得合理的回报，这至关重要。” 事实是，一个强劲的经济和市场环境是一件好事。我们应该为此感到庆幸，因为这几乎总是带来更高的生活水平和人均GDP。然而，正如钟摆一样，牛市相关的行为可能会走得太远。因此，那些受益最多的人可能会错误地将成功归因于技能而非运气。如此一来，当市场最终崩盘时，就像达斯汀·约翰逊的世界排名一样，投资组合的价值可能在相对较短的时间内大幅下跌。事实是，目前机构投资组合中充斥着股票（包括公开和私人），401(k)计划的参与率也从未如此之高，导致超过65%的美国人对美国股票有所接触。这导致了私人股权投资估值的显著上升，以及标普500指数目前的市盈率高达23倍。问题是，过去一个世纪中，任何在这些水平上投资的资金，其后续十年的回报率几乎为零（年回报率在-2%到2%之间波动）。投资的讽刺之处在于，感觉最好的时候往往正是投资组合最脆弱的时刻——而感觉最糟糕的时候，实际上却是它们最安全的时刻。换句话说，现在不要过于安逸。与LIV高尔夫球员不同，没有什么是保证的。
---------------

The 2025 PGA Tour season wrapped up this past weekend with a great redemption story after Tommy Fleetwood won the Tour Championship at East Lake in Atlanta. The win was his first since joining the Tour eight years ago, netting him the biggest payday of his career ($10 million).

The weekend also marked the end of LIV Golf’s season, nearly four years after the Saudis launched the new tour and poached a number of the PGA’s biggest stars.

This begs a question — while players like Fleetwood who chose to stay with the PGA Tour have continued to thrive, how have the players who made the jump to LIV fared?

Using major championships as the barometer of success, the answer is — underwhelming at best. As a result, LIV Golf has become a case study in what happens when someone earns life-changing money for simply showing up. The lessons reach far beyond golf.

Launched in 2021 to diversify Saudi Arabia’s oil-dependent economy and enhance its global image, LIV Golf skipped the organic slow-build process, choosing instead to buy immediate relevance by offering massive, guaranteed contracts to top PGA players:

Jon Rahm ($300 million)

Phil Mickelson ($200M)

Brooks Koepka ($130M)

Dustin Johnson ($125M)

Bryson DeChambeau ($125M)

Cameron Smith ($100M)

Lee Westwood ($40M)

Patrick Reed ($35M)

In doing so, LIV upended professional golf’s incentive structure.

How so?

Because on the PGA Tour, pay depends on performance — to finish “in the money,” you must at minimum make the cut. Meanwhile, on the LIV Tour, contracts are guaranteed no matter where you finish.

So, the logical question is — what impact did this new incentive structure have on performance?

The Performance Paradox

While there are a few exceptions (notably Bryson DeChambeau and Jon Rahm), most players’ performance has deteriorated. Consider two of the biggest former stars on the PGA Tour in the years prior to and after defecting to LIV:

Dustin Johnson — Prior to leaving the PGA, Johnson was ranked #2 in the world, had four top-10 finishes in majors (including two top three finishes) and a Masters victory in 2020. Since joining LIV, he has missed the cut in five of the last eight majors. He currently ranks #120 in the world according to The Data Golf Rankings.

Cameron Smith — Smith was also ranked #2 in the world, had six top-10 finishes in majors and a victory at the 2022 British Open at St. Andrews. Since then, Smith has missed the cut at four of the last eight majors. Currently ranked #92 in the world. Most recently, just six of the fourteen LIV players who played in the 2025 U.S. Open at Oakmont made the cut, and those that did were irrelevant come Sunday’s final round.

So, what explains the drop?

Some point to LIV’s softer competitive format, smaller crowds, and global travel demands. But the simpler answer lies in human nature — sudden and guaranteed wealth can reduce your drive and motivation, making you too comfortable and complacent in the process.

But, do you blame them?

Be honest… if someone handed you $100 million tomorrow just to show up, would you still grind on the range until sundown, chip until your hands blister, and live out of a suitcase half the year?

Probably not.

Initial Conclusion

Given this data, I initially concluded that receiving guaranteed life-changing money must make it very difficult to stay motivated. To maintain your discipline. To grind. As a result, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that performance would suffer. However, needing confirmation, I looked at a few other sports. What I discovered surprised me.

I first searched for:

“Worst contracts in team sports history”

This produced lists that largely consisted of players who disappointed due to injuries, rather than a lack of effort — players like Mike Trout in the MLB, Deshaun Watson in the NFL, Rick DiPietro in the NHL, and Allan Houston in the NBA.

I was a bit surprised, so I subsequently searched for:

“Highest current guaranteed contracts in team sports”

Answers included players like Josh Allen in the NFL, Steph Curry in the NBA, and Bryce Harper in the MLB, who are all still playing at an elite level.

My original thesis appeared to be incorrect, or at least flawed, which begged another question — why have guaranteed contracts had a much different impact on these athletes than on LIV golfers?

I concluded it likely boils down to accountability.

In team sports, players are accountable to their teammates and coaches. They must face them daily in the locker room, clubhouse, or huddle. Their success, or lack thereof, has a direct impact on other people’s performance, and therefore their lives. Meanwhile in golf, players only have to answer to themselves.

The result?

Without a level of responsibility to others, complacency tends to creep in more quickly.

So What?

This dynamic applies far beyond sports. In fact, we are witnessing something similar in financial markets and the implications could be material.

The fact is, a sustained bull market for close to fifteen years in countless assets has potentially made many investors and companies a bit too comfortable. From equities (both public and private) to housing, precious metals, private credit, high yield bonds, and cryptocurrencies, anything with a “risk premium” has appreciated materially. The result is a massive increase is total financial assets across both individuals and institutions alike.

Total Financial Assets — Households and Non-Profits (Statista):

At the same time, the unemployment rate has remained low, credit spreads are still tight, and profit margins have remained elevated.

So, where does this leave us?

In a situation where it will pay to not get too comfortable. To take a team player mentality. To be like Josh Allen and Steph Curry instead of Dustin Johnson and Cam Smith. To strongly consider who is depending on you and the portfolio (or business) you manage, be it your firm, clients, colleagues, investors, partners, or family.

This means realizing that your portfolio’s (or business’s) success has likely benefitted from a very strong tailwind, but is now vulnerable and full of gains that could evaporate in the blink of an eye. Rebalancing and a thoughtful reallocation to assets (or parts of the business) that are cheaper, less risky, and/or out of favor may be prudent at this time.

When it comes to the companies or funds you invest in, look for those with strong cultures, widely dispersed equity, and a demonstrated history of navigating through cycles. Those with leaders who have faced their employees during difficult moments and led them to the other side. Leaders like J.P. Morgan CEO, Jamie Dimon, who navigated his firm through the financial crisis better than anyone and explained part of the reason why, saying,

“Our clients know that we are there for them, are steady, do a good job for them, and that we earn a fair share for ourselves for doing so, which is critical.”

The fact is, a strong economy and market is a great thing. Something we should all be thankful for because it almost always leads to things like higher standards of living and GDP per capita. This said, like a pendulum, the behavior associated with a bull market can swing too far. As a result, those who benefit the most can wrongly attribute this success to skill rather than luck. In doing so, when markets eventually crack, like Dustin Johnson’s world ranking, a portfolio’s value can drop materially in a relatively short period of time.

The fact is, today, institutional portfolios are loaded with equities (both public and private) and 401k participation has never been higher, leading to more than 65% of Americans have some exposure to U.S. equities. This has led to a material rise in private equity valuations and an S&P 500 that currently stands at 23x price-to-earnings. The trouble is that over the past century, any dollars invested at these levels have produced near-zero returns over the subsequent decade (ranges from -2% to 2% annually).

The ironic part about investing is that the times that feel the best are often when portfolios are most vulnerable — while the moments that feel the worst are actually when they are most secure. Said another way, don’t get too comfortable right now. Unlike the LIV Golfers, nothing is guaranteed.

关于大事的小规则 || Little Rules About Big Things

2025-08-13T21:54:00+00:00

我逐渐接受的一些事情：

经济不确定性很少多或少，只是人们对于潜在风险的无知程度发生了变化。

你应该专注于那些会造成永久性伤害的风险，而对造成暂时伤害的风险则不必太在意，但实际情况往往相反。

唯一能积累财富的方式是让你的自我认知与收入之间存在差距。

每个人都是某个群体的一员，却低估了这个群体对其思维方式的影响。

很多财务争论其实只是拥有不同时间视野的人在互相争吵。

人们很容易将“我擅长这个”误解为“别人不擅长这个”，从而高估自己的技能价值。

区分玫瑰色的乐观与上升趋势中的混乱时期非常重要。

如果你的期望增长速度超过收入，无论积累多少财富，你都不会对金钱感到满足。

无法预测过去的能力并不会影响我们预测未来的欲望。确定性如此宝贵，以至于我们永远不会放弃对它的追求，而大多数人如果诚实面对未来的不确定性，可能根本无法起床。

没有错失恐惧症可能是最重要的投资技能。

在现代世界中，良好的辨别谎言能力比任何东西都更有价值。

大多数人所谓的“信念”其实是一种故意忽视新信息的意愿，这种信念一旦形成就可能变得危险。

人们的欲望差异很大，除了三点：尊重、感到有用、以及对时间的控制。这三点几乎是普遍的。

市场是理性的，但投资者却在玩不同的游戏，而这些游戏在其他人看来是不合理的。

存在一个最佳点，你掌握了重要的东西，但又不够聪明以至于不会感到无聊。

从经济史中得出的一个重要结论是：过去并不像你记得的那么好，现在也不像你想象的那么糟，而未来会比你预期的更好。

大多数自以为是的人其实正在经历人生中的巨大痛苦。人们隐藏自己的缺点，这需要你对他们的怪癖和情绪进行盲目的原谅，因为你并不知道他们正在经历什么。

历史由意外事件推动，而预测则由显而易见的事件主导。

悲观主义听起来总是比乐观主义更聪明，因为乐观主义听起来像是一种推销，而悲观主义则像是在试图帮助你。

每一个过去的衰退都看起来像是一次机会，而每一个未来的衰退则看起来像是一场风险。

一种令人安慰的错觉是认为别人糟糕的处境不会发生在自己身上。

对许多人来说，变得富有这个过程的感觉比拥有财富本身更令人愉悦。

某件事可以是事实正确但语境上毫无意义。糟糕的想法往往至少有一些真理的种子，这给了追随者信心。

每一个市场估值都是今天的一个数字乘以对明天的一个故事。

喜剧演员是唯一真正优秀的思想领袖，因为他们理解世界运作的方式，但更愿意让你发笑而不是让他们自己显得聪明。

人们是在被惊讶时学习的。不是在读到正确答案或被告知自己做错了的时候，而是在经历预期与现实之间的差距时。

人们往往比知道自己可能快乐的事情更确定自己会生气。快乐是复杂的，因为你不断改变目标，而痛苦则更可预测。

变得富有和保持富有是两件不同的事情，需要不同的技能。

金钱最大的内在价值是它能给予你对时间的控制。

过去的成功总是看起来比实际更容易，因为现在你知道了结局，而当你试图回忆过去时，又无法抹去今天的认知。

“从历史中学习足够的内容，以尊重彼此的错觉。” ——威廉·杜兰特

从那些经历过风险的人身上能学到更多，而不是那些看似战胜了风险的人，因为承受风险所需的技能更可能重复且适用于未来的风险。

没有什么太好或太坏的事情能永远保持不变，因为繁荣时期通过自满和杠杆效应种下了自我毁灭的种子，而困难时期则通过机会和恐慌驱动的解决问题种下了自我恢复的种子。

大多数人其实可以负担不起成为优秀投资者，但他们无法负担成为糟糕的投资者。

金钱能为你做什么以及不能为你做什么并不直观，因此大多数人会对突然拥有更多或更少金钱时的感受感到惊讶。

你的个人经历只占世界发生事件的0.00000001%，但可能占你对世界运作方式看法的80%。

一些不可持续的事物可以比你预想的持续更久。

“财富最不被察觉的一面是，当经济变得不必要时，金钱带来的快乐就会停止。一个能随意购买自己渴望之物而无需咨询银行家的人，其实并不珍惜他所购买的东西。” ——威廉·达文

拿破仑对军事天才的定义是“在周围人疯狂时仍能保持平常心的人”。在商业和投资领域也是如此。

很难区分大胆与鲁莽、贪婪与雄心、反潮流与错误。

伍德罗·威尔逊曾讨论过某件事是应归功于达尔文还是牛顿。这是一个有用的观念。一切事物都应归功于其中一人，而你必须知道某件事是否随时间适应和改变，还是永远保持不变。

风险有两个阶段：第一，当它真正发生时；第二，当它的伤痕影响我们后续的决定时。经济衰退以及随之而来的持续悲观情绪，往往造成更大的伤害。

告诉人们他们想听的内容，你就可以在很长时间内错误而不受惩罚。

乐观和悲观总是会超出预期，因为只有当你略微超越它们时，才能真正了解它们的边界。

声誉在两个方向上都有惯性，因为人们希望与赢家建立联系，而避免与输家交往。

用数字欺骗比用文字更容易，因为人们理解故事，但面对数字时眼神会变得呆滞。正如俗话所说，用Excel写下的虚构作品比用Word多得多。

很容易利用他人，但同样也容易低估那些长期被利用的人群所拥有的力量和影响力。

你只有五秒钟来吸引人们的注意力。无论是书、博客、电子邮件还是报告，如果你不能在五秒钟内抓住他们的注意力，就几乎耗尽了他们的耐心。

看起来好像我们十年或二十年都没有创新，其实是因为要等到十年或二十年后，创新才会成为显而易见的成功。

你出生的时间和地点对你的生活结果的影响，可能比你有意为之的任何事情都更大。

大多数人擅长学习事实，但不擅长学习规则——那些从事件中得出的广泛教训，适用于未来的事件。

每个人都在对未知的未来下注。只有当你与他人的下注不一致时，这种行为才被称为投机。

有两种信息：一种是你在未来仍然会关心的信息，另一种则是随着时间推移变得越来越不重要的信息。长期知识与过期知识。当你遇到新事物时，识别哪一种是关键。

那些导致异常成功所需的特质，同时也是导致失败概率增加的特质。大胆与鲁莽之间的界限很薄。因此，不要盲目赞扬成功或批评失败，因为它们往往做出相似的决定，只是运气略有不同。

在沟通时，“了解你的受众”很容易变成“迎合你的受众”。

大多数财务错误发生在你试图让事情发生得比所需更快的时候。复利不喜欢你使用捷径。

大多数人有一个最佳的净资产水平，超过这个水平后，幸福感不再增加，而更多的钱反而成为社交和心理上的负担。这个数字因人而异，但很可能比大多数人想象的要低。

风险是你看不见的、认为只发生在别人身上、没有关注的、故意忽视的、以及未被新闻报道的。一次小的意外通常比几个月来一直被报道的大灾难造成更大的伤害。

创新和经济可以相距甚远。Twitter直接影响核国家之间的地缘政治，而其价值却只有Progressive汽车保险的一半。

风险管理更多是关于识别在实际发生之前可能出错的事情数量，而不是你如何应对风险。

市场上的营销（挥舞手臂）太多，而品牌建设（建立信任）太少。

很多人并不清楚自己在下什么赌注。也许他们以为自己在押注颠覆性技术，结果发现他们其实是在押注低利率。或者他们以为自己在押注替代能源，结果发现他们其实是在押注补贴和税收优惠。许多赌注失败并非因为赌注本身错误，而是因为你不了解自己最初在下什么赌注。

住房常常是伪装成安全资产的负债。

询问最大的风险是什么，就像询问你期望被什么意外所震惊。如果你知道最大的风险是什么，你就会采取行动，而采取行动会降低风险。你的想象力无法理解的正是危险的东西，这也是为什么风险永远无法被掌控。

很多优秀的写作都在阐述人们已经直觉知道但尚未言明的观点。这之所以有效，是因为读者在不费力质疑其真实性的情况下就能学到新东西。其他选择要么是明显且广为人知的观点（乏味），要么是非明显且未知的观点（通常需要太多努力去理解，导致不耐烦的读者离开）。

情绪可以超越任何层面的智慧。

小风险被夸大，因为它们容易讨论；大风险则被低估和忽视，因为它们在发生前似乎荒谬。

如果你有一个想法，却认为“有人已经做过这个”，请记住，有1010本已出版的温斯顿·丘吉尔传记。

没有人像你一样关注你。

约翰·D·洛克菲勒的价值相当于4000亿美元，但他从未使用过青霉素、防晒霜或布洛芬。在他成年生活的大部分时间里，他甚至没有电灯、空调或墨镜。财富的一切都是在特定期望背景下的处境。

读更少的预测，更多的历史。研究更多的失败，而不是成功。

生活中存在最佳的谎言比例。对麻烦、无意义和低效没有容忍度并不是一种值得称赞的品质；这其实是对现实的否认。一旦你接受一定水平的谎言，你就会停止否认其存在，并对世界运作方式有更清晰的认识。

大多数问题比看起来更复杂，但大多数解决方案却比它们本身更简单。

大约每十年，人们就会忘记泡沫形成和破裂的周期大约也是每十年一次。

如果某件事无法被了解，你最好不那么聪明，因为聪明人会欺骗自己以为他们知道，而普通人更可能耸耸肩，最终更接近现实。

你无法相信风险而不同时相信运气，因为它们本质上是同一回事——承认你无法控制的事物对结果的影响可能比你自己的行为更大。

“现实会以与你错觉相等的比例回报你。” ——威尔·史密斯

风险的最大燃料是杠杆、过度自信、自我和急躁。其最大的解药是拥有选择、谦逊和其他人的信任。

百年一遇的事件其实经常发生，因为许多不相关的事情都可能出错。如果有一种新灾难性大流行的1%可能性、一种毁灭性萧条的1%可能性、一种灾难性洪水的1%可能性、一种政治崩溃的1%可能性，等等，那么明年或任何一年发生不好的事情的概率……都非常高。这就是为什么阿诺德·汤因比说历史是“一件接一件的麻烦事”。

突然遭遇意外困难的人可能会采纳他们以前认为不可能的观点。

最容易说服人们你很特别，是因为他们还不了解你所有不特别的地方。

一个大群体随时间推移可以变得更好信源。但他们在动荡时期无法平均变得更耐心、更不贪婪或更冷静。这永远不会改变。

好想法很容易写，坏想法很难。困难是质量的信号，而写作障碍通常更多反映的是你的想法，而不是你的写作能力。

每天早上醒来想要解决问题的人比想要制造麻烦的人更多。但制造麻烦的人却获得更多关注。因此，在坏消息的鼓点中缓慢前进是常态。

一切皆为销售。

---------------

A few things I’ve come to terms with:

There is rarely more or less economic uncertainty; just changes in how ignorant people are to potential risks.

You should obsess over risks that do permanent damage and care little about risks that do temporary harm, but the opposite is more common.

The only way to build wealth is to have a gap between your ego and your income.

Everyone belongs to a tribe and underestimates how influential that tribe is on their thinking.

A lot of financial debates are just people with different time horizons talking over each other.

It’s easy to mistake “I’m good at this” with “Others are bad at this” in a way that makes you overestimate how valuable your skills are.

It’s important to know the difference between rosy optimism and periods of chaos that trend upward.

If your expectations grow faster than your income you’ll never be happy with your money no matter how much you accumulate.

The inability to forecast the past has no impact on our desire to forecast the future. Certainty is so valuable that we’ll never give up the quest for it, and most people couldn’t get out of bed in the morning if they were honest about how uncertain the future is.

Having no FOMO might be the most important investing skill.

Few things are as valuable in the modern world as a good bullshit detector.

Most of what people call “conviction” is a willful disregard for new information that might make you change your mind. That’s when beliefs turn dangerous.

People have vastly different desires, except for three things: Respect, feeling useful, and control over their time. Those are nearly universal.

The market is rational but investors play different games and those games look irrational to people playing a different game.

There’s a sweet spot where you grasp the important stuff but you’re not smart enough to be bored with it.

A big takeaway from economic history is that the past wasn’t as good as you remember, the present isn’t as bad as you think, and the future will be better than you anticipate.

Most assholes are going through something terrible in their life. People hide their skeletons, which requires blind forgiveness of their quirks and moods because you’re unaware of what they’re dealing with.

History is driven by surprising events but forecasting is driven by obvious ones.

Pessimism always sounds smarter than optimism because optimism sounds like a sales pitch while pessimism sounds like someone trying to help you.

Every past decline looks like an opportunity and every future decline looks like a risk.

A comforting delusion is thinking that other people’s bad circumstances couldn’t also happen to you.

For many people the process of becoming wealthier feels better than having wealth.

Something can be factually true but contextually nonsense. Bad ideas often have at least some seed of truth that gives their followers confidence.

Every market valuation is a number from today multiplied by a story about tomorrow.

Comedians are the only good thought leaders because they understand how the world works but they want to make you laugh rather than make themselves feel smart.

People learn when they’re surprised. Not when they read the right answer, or are told they’re doing it wrong, but when they experience a gap between expectations and reality.

People tend to know what makes them angry with more certainty than what might make them happy. Happiness is complicated because you keep moving the goalposts. Misery is more predictable.

Getting rich and staying rich are different things that require different skills.

Money’s greatest intrinsic value is its ability to give you control over your time.

Past success always seems easier than it was because you now know how the story ends, and you can’t unremember what you know today when trying to remember how you felt in the past.

“Learn enough from history to respect one another’s delusions.” -Will Durant

There’s more to learn from people who endured risk than those who seemingly conquered it, because the kind of skills you need to endure risk are more likely repeatable and relevant to future risks.

Nothing too good or too bad stays that way forever, because great times plant the seeds of their own destruction through complacency and leverage, and bad times plant the seeds of their own turnaround through opportunity and panic-driven problem-solving.

Most people can afford to not be a great investor. But they can’t afford to be a bad investor.

What money can and can’t do for you isn’t intuitive, so most people are surprised at how they feel when they suddenly have more or less than before.

Your personal experiences make up maybe 0.00000001% of what’s happened in the world but maybe 80% of how you think the world works.

Unsustainable things can last longer than you anticipate.

“The thing that is least perceived about wealth is that all pleasure in money ends at the point where economy becomes unnecessary. The man who can buy anything he covets, without any consultation with his banker, values nothing that he buys.” - William Dawson

Napoleon’s definition of a military genius was “The man who can do the average thing when everyone else around him is losing his mind.” It’s the same in business and investing.

It’s hard to tell the difference between boldness and recklessness, greed and ambition, contrarian and wrong.

Woodrow Wilson talked about whether something was accountable to Darwin or accountable to Newton. It’s a useful idea. Everything is accountable to one of the two, and you have to know whether something adapts and changes over time or perpetually stays the same.

Risk has two stages: First, when it actually hits. Then, when its scars influence our subsequent decisions. The recession, and the lingering pessimism that does as much damage.

Tell people what they want to hear and you can be wrong indefinitely without penalty.

Optimism and pessimism always overshoot because the only way to know the boundaries of either is to go a little bit past them.

Reputations have momentum in both directions because people want to associate with winners and avoid losers.

It’s easier to lie with numbers than words, because people understand stories but their eyes glaze over with numbers. As the saying goes, more fiction has been written in Excel than Word.

It’s easy to take advantage of people. It’s also easy to underestimate the power and influence of groups of people who have been taken advantage of for too long.

You have five seconds to get people’s attention. Books, blogs, emails, reports, it doesn’t matter – if you don’t sell them in five seconds you’ve exhausted most of their patience.

It always looks like we haven’t innovated in 10 or 20 years because it can take10 or 20 years before an innovation is an obvious success.

When and where you were born can have a bigger impact on your outcome in life than anything you do intentionally.

Most people are good at learning facts but not great at learning rules – the broad lessons from events that will apply to future events.

Everyone is making a bet on an unknown future. It’s only called speculation when you disagree with someone else’s bet.

There are two types of information: stuff you’ll still care about in the future, and stuff that matters less and less over time. Long-term vs. expiring knowledge. It’s critical to identify which is which when you come across something new.

The same traits needed for outlier success are the same traits that increase the odds of failure. The line between bold and reckless is thin. So be careful blindly praising successes or criticizing failures, as they often made similar decisions with slightly different levels of luck.

When communicating, “know your audience” easily becomes “pander to your audience.”

Most financial mistakes come when you try to force things to happen faster than is required. Compounding doesn’t like when you try to use a cheat code.

There is an optimal net worth for most people, after which not only does happiness stop increasing but more money becomes a social and psychological liability. The number is different for everyone, but is probably lower than most people think.

Risk is what you can’t see, think only happens to other people, aren’t paying attention to, are willfully ignoring, and isn’t in the news. A little surprise usually does more damage than something big that’s been in the news for months.

Innovation and economics can be miles apart. Twitter directly influences geopolitics between nuclear states and is worth half as much as Progressive Auto Insurance.

Risk management is less about how you respond to risk and more about recognizing how many things can go wrong before they actually do.

There is too much marketing (waving your arms) and not enough branding (building trust).

A lot of people don’t realize what bet they’re making. Maybe they thought they were betting on disruptive technology, but it turned out they were betting on low interest rates. Or they thought they were betting on alternative energy, but it turned out they were betting on subsidies and tax credits. Many bets don’t work not because your bet was wrong, but because you didn’t realize the bet you were making in the first place.

Housing is often a liability masquerading as a safe asset.

Asking what the biggest risks are is like asking what you expect to be surprised about. If you knew what the biggest risk was you would do something about it, and doing something about it makes it less risky. What your imagination can’t fathom is the dangerous stuff, and it’s why risk can never be mastered.

A lot of good writing makes points that people already intuitively know but haven’t yet put into words. It works because readers learn something new without having to expend much energy questioning whether it’s true. The alternatives are points that are obvious and well known (boring) or something that’s non-obvious and unknown (often takes too much effort to understand and impatient readers leave).

Emotions can override any level of intelligence.

Small risks are overblown because they’re easy to talk about, big risks are discounted and ignored because they seem preposterous before they arrive.

If you have an idea but think “someone has already done that,” just remember there are 1,010 published biographies of Winston Churchill.

No one is thinking about you as much as you are.

John D. Rockefeller was worth the equivalent of $400 billion, but he never had penicillin, sunscreen, or Advil. For most of his adult life he didn’t have electric lights, air conditioning, or sunglasses. Everything about wealth is circumstances in the context of expectations.

Read fewer forecasts and more history. Study more failures and fewer successes.

There is an optimal amount of bullshit in life. Having no tolerance for hassle, nonsense and inefficiency is not an admirable trait; it’s denying reality. Once you accept a certain level of BS, you stop denying its existence and have a clearer view of how the world works.

Most problems are more complicated than they look but most solutions should be simpler than they are.

About once a decade people forget that bubbles form and burst about once a decade.

If something is impossible to know you are better off not being very smart, because smart people fool themselves into thinking they know while average people are more likely to shrug their shoulders and end up closer to reality.

You can’t believe in risk without also believing in luck because they are fundamentally the same thing—an acknowledgment that things outside of your control can have a bigger impact on outcomes than anything you do on your own.

“Reality will pay you back in equal proportion to your delusion.” – Will Smith

Risk’s greatest fuels are leverage, overconfidence, ego, and impatience. Its greatest antidote is having options, humility, and other people’s trust.

Once-in-a-century events happen all the time because lots of unrelated things can go wrong. If there’s a 1% chance of a new disastrous pandemic, a 1% chance of a crippling depression, a 1% chance of a catastrophic flood, a 1% chance of political collapse, and on and on, then the odds that something bad will happen next year – or any year – are … pretty good. It’s why Arnold Toynbee says history is “just one damn thing after another.”

People suffering from sudden, unexpected hardship can adopt views they previously would have considered unthinkable.

It’s easiest to convince people that you’re special if they don’t know you well enough to see all the ways you’re not.

A large group of people can become better informed over time. But they can’t, on average, become more patient, less greedy, or more level-headed during periods of upheaval. That will never change.

Good ideas are easy to write, bad ideas are hard. Difficulty is a quality signal, and writer’s block usually indicates more about your ideas than your writing.

More people wake up every morning wanting to solve problems than wake up looking to cause harm. But people who cause harm get the most attention. So slow progress amid a drumbeat of bad news is the normal state of affairs.

Everything is sales.

多么精彩的世界啊（几个故事） || What A World (A few Stories)

2025-08-04T09:19:00+00:00

几个短篇故事：

Bronco酒庄的CEO——这家酒庄向Trader Joe’s销售Charles Shaw的“Two Buck Chuck”葡萄酒——曾被问及为何能以低于瓶装水成本的价格出售葡萄酒。

他回答：“他们对水收费过高。你没明白吗？”

富兰克林·罗斯福在1941年他的总统图书馆开幕时，环顾四周后笑着说道。一位记者问他为何如此高兴。“我想到了所有将来会来这里的历史学家，他们以为能找到解答他们问题的答案。”他说。

我们所知道的历史，仅限于被记录下来、公开分享或对着摄像机说出的内容。那些被保密、藏在某人脑海中、最终带入坟墓的资料，可能有——我也不知道——一千倍之多，而且更加有趣。

在莱特兄弟飞行之前数年，许多其他企业家尝试建造飞机，不断试验不同的模型以寻找可行方案。

其中一位是德国发明家奥托·利林塔尔。1896年8月的一次飞行中，利林塔尔的滑翔机在50英尺高空突然像石头一样坠落。奥托因此颈骨骨折。

他第二天去世，临终前说的最后一句话是对该领域进步的奉献：“必须做出牺牲。”

加比·金格拉斯出生时无法感知疼痛。她拥有完整的触觉。但一种罕见的遗传疾病使她完全无法感知身体疼痛。

你可能会认为这是超能力，或者是一种非凡的礼物。但她的生活却非常糟糕。无法感知疼痛使加比无法在物理世界中分辨对错。一份简介总结了其中一部分：

当加比的乳牙长出时，她撕咬了自己口腔的内侧。加比不知道自己造成的伤害，因为她无法通过疼痛来停止。她的父母只能无助地看着。

“她会把手指咬得血肉模糊，她会像嚼泡泡糖一样咬自己的舌头，”加比的父亲史蒂夫·金格拉斯解释道。“她最终住院10天，因为舌头肿得厉害，无法喝水。”

疼痛也能阻止婴儿把手指放进眼睛里。没有疼痛的警示，加比严重抓伤了眼睛，医生不得不暂时缝合她的双眼。如今，她因童年自伤而成为法律上的盲人。

疼痛是痛苦的。没有疼痛的生活是一场灾难。

诺曼底登陆前一晚，富兰克林·罗斯福问他的妻子埃莉诺对未知的未来有何看法。

“六十岁的人还对不确定性感到叛逆，这不是很可笑吗？”她说。

最初的福特Model T汽车内含有超过100平方英尺的木材。乘以数百万辆汽车，这是一笔巨大的木材消耗，也产生了大量的木屑和锯末。

亨利·福特，这位永远的创业者，思考着这些木屑能做什么。他决定将其制成木炭。

由此诞生了Kingsford木炭公司，该公司在110年后仍占据烧烤市场80%的市场份额。

BlackRock首席执行官拉里·芬克曾讲述过一次与全球最大主权财富基金经理共进晚餐的经历。

该基金的目标，经理表示，是跨代的。

“那么你如何衡量业绩？”芬克问道。

“按季度。”经理回答。

理想与现实之间的差距。

罗宾·威廉姆斯是一位天才，比大多数人更了解世界运作方式。他同时也是一位糟糕的学生。有时这些特质会同时出现。

在College of Marin的一堂宏观经济课上，威廉姆斯的期末论文只有一句话给他的教授：“先生，我真的不知道。”

他因此不及格。但若问我，他的回答是最高层次的经济智慧。

迈克尔·刘易斯于1989年出版了他的第一本书《骗子的扑克牌》。这本书大获成功。但他的下一本著作却等了十年。他后来解释了自己为何暂停写作，以及为何用爱好填满时间：

作家们可能会陷入一种思维模式，觉得他们必须写出另一本书……出版商在后面催促，他们准备再次推动你开始写作。而我总是觉得，如果从头开始，重新来过，像从未写过书一样，那么书会更好。这至少给了我一个不写书的选项。

最好的想法往往是在耐心等待中出现的，而这并不是你或你的老板可以安排的。

肯尼迪和杰奎琳·肯尼迪的婚姻并不幸福。1955年，两人结婚两年后，杰克告诉他的父亲约瑟夫·肯尼迪，他想要离婚。

约瑟夫回答：“你疯了。你将来会当总统的，这会毁掉一切。离婚是不可能的。”

杰克重申他和杰奎琳并不幸福。

他的父亲反驳道：“你能不能想不通，重要的是人们如何看待你，而不是你真正是什么？”

第一辆汽车出现在美国城市是在19世纪末。并不是所有人都感到高兴。1896年，华盛顿特区禁止汽车，理由是它们威胁了马匹的生计。《华盛顿邮报》报道说：

哥伦比亚特区的委员们决心让马匹不被自行车所取代，更不被无马车所取代。

改变很难。

第一次世界大战停战协议的一部分迫使德国拆解其军队。六百万支步枪、三千万发炮弹、五十亿发子弹、一千万颗手榴弹、一万六千架飞机、四百五十艘船只，以及数百万吨其他战争装备被摧毁或剥离。

但二十年后，德国拥有世界上最先进的军队。它拥有最快的坦克、最强的空军、最强大的火炮、最先进的通讯设备，以及世界上第一枚导弹。

一个灾难性的讽刺是，这种进步并非发生在德国被解除武装之后，而是因为被解除武装。

美国陆军参谋长乔治·马歇尔指出：

第一次世界大战后，几乎所有东西都被从德国拿走了。因此当德国重新武装时，它必须生产一套完整的军需物资。结果，德国拥有了装备最先进武器的军队。这是世界历史上前所未有的情况。

拥有资源会带来一组优势，而从零开始则会带来另一组优势。后者可能悄然强大。

尤利西斯·S·格兰特的妻子朱莉娅不喜欢亚伯拉罕·林肯的妻子玛丽。

当林肯总统邀请格兰特陪同他和第一夫人前往福特剧院时，格兰特拒绝了，开玩笑说这是他妻子的命令让他待在家里。林肯回答：

“当然，将军，你已经离开家很久了，一直在战场上战斗，所以应该考虑朱莉娅的直觉。不过，我非常遗憾，因为人民只会太高兴见到你。”

林肯几个小时后便被枪击。

历史学家罗恩·切诺写道：

格兰特会长期思考，如果他当时在福特剧院，是否可能改变结果，以及朱莉娅对玛丽的厌恶是否无意中影响了美国历史的走向。

格兰特，凭借敏锐的战场直觉，是否能察觉到刺客的脚步？他是否更加关注安全问题，带自己的保镖？那个无所不在的助手贝克维斯是否能坐在剧院外，缓冲老板的危险？

如此多重要的历史都悬于一线之间。

我在Netflix上看到的克里斯·洛克非常搞笑，完美无缺。而每年在数十家小俱乐部表演的克里斯·洛克则只是还行。没有人能如此擅长喜剧，以至于他写的每个笑话都好笑。因此，每个大喜剧演员都会在小俱乐部测试他们的材料，然后再在大型场所使用。洛克解释说：

当我开始巡演时，并不是从体育馆开始的。在上一次巡演之前，我在新不伦瑞克的一个叫Stress Factory的地方表演过。我做了大约40到50场演出来准备巡演。

一份报纸描述了洛克在Stress Factory时，面对漠不关心的观众，手忙脚乱地处理材料。“我得删掉一些笑话，”他在即兴段子中说道。

这并不差；他仍然是个天才。

但所有成功都像冰山一样：我们看到的只是其中一小部分，而且所有艰难的部分都被剥离了。

克林顿总统在2000年1月的国情咨文演讲中提到：

我们开始新千年时，拥有超过2000万个新工作岗位；经历了超过30年的最快经济增长；失业率降至30年来的最低点；贫困率降至20年来的最低点；非裔和拉丁裔失业率也创下了历史最低纪录；我们实现了42年来首次连续盈余；而下个月，美国将实现整个历史中最长的经济增长期。

这并不是夸大其词。但这也标志着现代股市最糟糕的十年的开始。

2010年1月，奥巴马总统在国情咨文演讲中提到：

仍有十分之一的美国人找不到工作。许多企业倒闭。房价下跌。小城镇和农村社区受到重创。而那些原本就生活在贫困中的人，生活变得更加艰难。

这同样不是夸大其词。但这也标志着现代股市最佳时期之一的开始。

盖洛普已经向美国人提问超过四十年：“你对美国目前的发展状况是否满意？”

自1969年以来，平均有63%的美国人回答“不满意”。有趣的是，盖洛普还问了一个后续问题：“你对目前自己的生活状况是否满意？”

在那里，平均回答“不满意”的比例仅为15.8%。

人们往往对自己持乐观态度，而对他人持悲观态度。社交媒体可能加剧了这种现象。本杰明·埃文斯说：“互联网让人们接触到更多不同的观点，这反而使人们更加愤怒，因为存在不同的观点。”

---------------

A few short stories:

The CEO of Bronco Wine – which sells the Charles Shaw “Two Buck Chuck” wine at Trader Joe’s – was once asked how he’s able to sell wine for less than the cost of bottled water.

He replied: “They’re overcharging you for the water. Don’t you get it?”

Franklin Roosevelt looked around the room and chuckled when his presidential library opened in 1941. A reporter asked why he was so cheerful. “I’m thinking of all the historians who will come here thinking they’ll find the answers to their questions,” he said.

Everything we know about history is limited to what’s been written down, shared publicly, or spoken into a camera. The stuff that’s been kept secret, in someone’s head, taken to the grave, must be – I don’t know – 1,000 times as large and more interesting.

Years before the Wright Brothers flew, scores of other entrepreneurs attempted to build an airplane, tinkering with different models to see what might work.

One was a German inventor named Otto Lilienthal. On one flight in August 1896, Lilienthal’s glider was 50 feet in the air when it suddenly dropped to the ground like a stone. Otto broke his neck.

He died the next day, just after uttering his final words, a dedication to the progress of his field: “Sacrifices must be made.”

Gabby Gingras was born unable to feel pain. She has a full sense of touch. But a rare genetic condition left her completely unable to sense physical pain.

You might think this is a superpower, or an incredible gift. But her life is dreadful. The inability to feel pain left Gabby unable to distinguish right from wrong in the physical world. One profile summarized a fraction of it:

As Gabby’s baby teeth came in, she mutilated the inside of her mouth. Gabby was unaware of the damage she was causing because she didn’t feel the pain that would tell her to stop. Her parents watch helplessly.

“She would chew her fingers bloody, she would chew on her tongue like it was bubble gum,” Steve Gingras, Gabby’s father, explained. “She ended up in the hospital for 10 days because her tongue was so swelled up she couldn’t drink.”

Pain also keeps babies from putting their fingers in their eyes. Without pain to stop her, Gabby scratched her eyes so badly doctors temporarily sewed them shut. Today she is legally blind because of self-inflicted childhood injuries.

Pain is miserable. Life without pain is a disaster.

The night before the D-Day Invasion, Franklin Roosevelt asked his wife Eleanor how she felt about not knowing what would happen next.

“To be nearly sixty years old and still rebel at uncertainty is ridiculous isn’t it?” she said.

The original Ford Model T had more than 100 square feet of wood in it. Multiplied by millions of cars, it was a tremendous amount of lumber and produced a tremendous amount of scrap wood and sawdust.

Henry Ford, ever the entrepreneur, wondered what he could do with the scraps. He settled on turning it into charcoal.

Thus began the Kingsford Charcoal company, which today – 110 years later – has an 80% market share in the barbeque market.

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink once told a story about having dinner with the manager of one of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds.

The fund’s objectives, the manager said, were generational.

“So how do you measure performance?” Fink asked.

“Quarterly,” said the manager.

The gap between ideals and reality.

Robin Williams was a genius who understood how the world works better than most. He was also a terrible student. Sometimes those traits appeared together.

During a macroeconomic class at College of Marin, Williams’ final paper contained a single sentence to his professor: “I really don’t know, sir.”

He failed the class. But if you ask me, his answer is the highest level of economic wisdom.

Michael Lewis published his first book, Liar’s Poker, in 1989. It was a huge hit. But his next book didn’t come for another decade. He later explained his hiatuses and why he fills his time with hobbies:

Writers can get in this mindset where they feel they have to write another book … the publisher’s on you afterwards and they’re ready to get you going again. And I just always feel that the book is going to be better if I start all over again, start completely fresh as if I’ve never written a book before and give myself at least the option of not writing books.

The best ideas happen when you wait patiently for them to come, which isn’t something you or your boss can schedule.

JFK and Jackie Kennedy didn’t have a great marriage. In 1955, two years after their marriage, Jack told his father, Joe Kennedy, he wanted a divorce.

Joe responded: “You’re out of your mind. You’re going to be president someday. This would ruin everything. Divorce is impossible.”

Jack reiterated that he and Jackie weren’t happy.

His father shot back: “Can’t you get it into your head that it’s not important what you really are? The only important thing is what people think you are!”

The first cars started showing up in American cities in the late 1800s. Not everyone was thrilled. In 1896, Washington DC banned cars on the grounds that they threatened the livelihoods of horses. The Washington Post reported:

The commissioners of the District of Columbia are determined that the horse whose occupation has so largely been taken away by reason of the use of bicycles shall not further be displaced by horseless carriage.

Change is hard.

Part of the Armistice that ended World War I forced the dismantling of Germany’s military. Six million rifles, 38 million projectiles, half a billion rounds of ammunition, 17 million grenades, 16,000 airplanes, 450 ships, and millions of tons of other war equipment were destroyed or stripped from Germany’s possession.

But 20 years later, Germany had the most sophisticated army in the world. It had the fastest tanks. The strongest air force. The most powerful artillery. The most sophisticated communication equipment, and the first missiles.

A catastrophic irony is that this advancement took place not in spite of, but because of, its disarmament.

George Marshall, U.S. Army Chief of Staff, noted:

After the [first] World War practically everything was taken away from Germany. So when it rearmed, it was necessary to produce a complete set of materiel for the troops. As a result, Germany has an army equipped with the most modern weapons that could be turned out. That is a situation that has never occurred before in the history of the world.

There’s a set of advantages that come from being endowed with resources. There’s another set of advantages that come from starting from scratch. The latter can be sneakingly powerful.

Ulysses S. Grant’s wife, Julia, did not like Abraham Lincoln’s wife, Mary.

When President Lincoln asked Grant to accompany him and the First Lady to Ford’s Theater on April 15th, 1865, Grant declined, joking with the president that it was a command from his wife that he stay home. Lincoln responded:

“Of course, General, you have been long from home, fighting in the field, and Mrs. Grant’s instincts should be considered before my request. I am very sorry, however, for the people would only be too glad to see you.”

Lincoln was shot hours later.

Historian Ron Chernow writes:

Grant would long wonder if his presence at Ford’s Theatre might have altered things and whether Julia’s dislike of Mary Lincoln had inadvertently modified the direction of American history.

Would Grant, with his acute battlefield instincts, have sensed the assassin’s tread? Would he have been more attentive to security concerns and brought his own security guard? Would the omnipresent [aide] Beckwith have sat outside the box, buffering his boss from harm?

So much important history hangs by a thread.

The Chris Rock I see on Netflix is hilarious, flawless. The Chris Rock that performs in dozens of small clubs each year is just OK. No one is so good at comedy that every joke they write is funny. So every big comedian tests their material in small clubs before using it in big venues. Rock explained:

When I start a tour, it’s not like I start out in arenas. Before this last tour I performed in this place in New Brunswick called the Stress Factory. I did about 40 or 50 shows getting ready for the tour.

One newspaper described Rock at the Stress Factory fumbling with material to an indifferent audience. “I’m going to have to cut some of these jokes,” he says mid-skit.

That isn’t bad; he’s still a genius.

But all success is like an iceberg: what most of us see is a fraction of what happened. And it’s stripped of all the hard parts.

President Clinton noted in his January 2000 State of the Union speech:

We begin the new century with over 20 million new jobs; the fastest economic growth in more than 30 years; the lowest unemployment rates in 30 years; the lowest poverty rates in 20 years; the lowest African-American and Hispanic unemployment rates on record; the first back-to-back surpluses in 42 years; and next month, America will achieve the longest period of economic growth in our entire history.

That wasn’t an exaggeration. But it marked the beginning of the worst decade for the stock market in modern times.

In January 2010, President Obama noted in his State of the Union speech:

One in 10 Americans still cannot find work. Many businesses have shuttered. Home values have declined. Small towns and rural communities have been hit especially hard. And for those who’d already known poverty, life has become that much harder.

That wasn’t an exaggeration. But it marked the beginning of one of the best periods for the stock market in modern times.

Gallup has been asking Americans for more than four decades, “Are you satisfied with the way things are going in the U.S. right now?”

The average percent of Americans answering “no” since 1969 is 63%.

What’s interesting is that Gallup asks a follow-up question: “Are you satisfied with the way things are going in your own life right now?”

There, the average “no” response is just 15.8%.

People tend to be optimistic about themselves but pessimistic about others. Social media probably supercharges that. Benedict Evans says, “The more the Internet exposes people to new points of view, the angrier people get that different views exist.”

法拉利状况 || Ferrari Status

2025-07-24T17:20:00+00:00

法拉利是一家汽车公司吗？显而易见的答案是肯定的，但根据其首席执行官贝内德托·维尼亚最近对公司的商业模式的描述，答案并非如此。他说：“我们不是——我们不是——一家汽车公司。我们是一家奢侈品牌公司，同时也制造汽车。” 这就是他们的差异化优势，他们的品牌，他们的“特色”。这确实有效，但并非因为这是营销策略。它有效是因为法拉利用实际行动支持这一理念。这是如何实现的？通过坚持其创始人恩佐·法拉利的“稀缺性原则”，即： “法拉利永远会比市场需求少交付一辆汽车。” 比市场需求少交付一辆汽车—— 有多少家公司能做到这一点？在我的经验中，很少有公司能做到这一点。事实上，许多公司恰恰相反。为什么？因为更多的规模通常被视为更好。规模、扩张和增长具有诱惑力。这是吸引新投资者和新鲜资金的关键。它能引起关注并占据头条。然而，规模和增长并不一定意味着强劲的业绩。只需看看过去五年汽车行业的表现即可。从2020年到2024年，法拉利的销量不到6万辆，但平均售价超过45万美元。相比之下，全球销量和营收最大的两家汽车公司之一丰田，自2020年以来已售出超过5200万辆汽车，平均售价为3.2万美元。与此同时，通用汽车的销量接近3000万辆，平均售价为5.1万美元。因此，尽管这些巨头的营收超过了一万亿美元，而法拉利的营收不到300亿美元，但法拉利的净利润率却显著更高，去年接近23%，而丰田和通用汽车的平均净利润率不到6%。从毛利率的角度来看，差距更加明显。结果导致了股票价格表现上的巨大差异，如下面的图表所示（RACE = 法拉利，TM = 丰田，GM = 通用汽车）。利润率至关重要。这不仅限于汽车行业。事实上，我们可以在从零售商到银行再到科技公司等多个领域看到类似现象。每个领域都充斥着失败的增长故事，从Abercrombie和Under Armour，到雷曼兄弟和Countrywide，再到GoPro、Clubhouse和Peloton。最近，曾经是英国标志性时尚品牌的Burberry承认，它也未能抵制对全球增长的无节制追求。正是由于这种行为，它稀释了自身的奢侈品牌形象，变得“无处不在”，因此现任CEO正在逐步撤回许多最具野心的扩张举措，并重新聚焦于构建品牌的核心要素。他说道：“我想依靠我们已有的资产，庆祝我们是谁。”换句话说，他希望回归法拉利的模式。如果真是这样，为什么更多的公司不效仿法拉利？正如摩根大通CEO杰米·迪蒙所言： “CEO们感受到巨大的增长压力。问题是，有时候你无法增长。很多时候，你并不想增长，因为增长可能会迫使你接受不良客户、承担过多风险或过度杠杆。” 然而，如今对增长、规模和体量的狂热依然存在。它几乎成为人们谈论的唯一话题。每家公司都希望被归类为高增长企业，因为这样可以获得最高的估值并吸引最多的关注。为了实现这一点，许多公司正在追逐拥有巨大总可寻址市场（即“TAM”）和无限机会的市场。他们优先考虑规模和体量，而忽视其他因素。然而，正如基准资本的比尔·古里最近在一次名为《保持私有化的礼物与诅咒》的播客中所指出的，这种做法导致了一种类似于“强制喂食”的动态。你听说过“强制喂食”吗？以前我也没听说过，但显然这是法国人用来强制喂养鸭子以生产鹅肝的工具。如今，风险投资公司正在做类似的事情，只不过他们不是用食物喂养鸭子，而是用资本强行喂养公司。通过这种方式，公司被迫在超出其能力范围的领域进行投资，雇佣人员销售尚未准备好推向市场的产品，并在整体上失去纪律性。正如古里在播客中所说： “这迫使每家公司都必须‘要么全赢，要么全输’，并且‘孤注一掷’。这不再是你的祖父辈的初创企业或风险投资基金。这是一个截然不同的世界。如果你是一位创始人，你希望能够无视这一切，按照自己的意愿来建设公司。但如果你的竞争对手筹集了3亿美元并计划将销售团队规模扩大到原来的10倍甚至50倍，你就会在还没意识到之前就已经被淘汰了。我认为这对整个生态系统是不利的，因为它会消除所有中小型成果，并迫使企业只打全垒打。但这就是我所感受到的。而且，这感觉像是我们没有从零利率时代吸取任何教训。” 显然，如果这种强制资本注入导致公司资本分配的不纪律，那么对支持它们的风险投资和私募股权基金来说，肯定会带来负面的连锁反应。事实上，我们可能已经看到了这种现象，表现为回报率下降和流动性减少。令人惊讶的是，即使私人市场已经充斥着大量资本，我们即将见证的资本流入可能还会更大，这来自于个人投资者的资金。只需看看最近《华尔街日报》的一篇文章，标题为《先锋集团，低成本投资的倡导者，为何加入“私人市场”热潮？》，该文章指出，被动投资的倡导者先锋集团已被私人市场所吸引。先锋集团并非孤例。KKR最近宣布与共同基金集团Capital Group建立合作伙伴关系，以扩展其替代性投资产品，面向“非合格”投资者。与此同时，查尔斯·斯威布公司宣布将进入替代性投资领域，通过将其纳入其401(k)计划和个人投资者平台来实现这一目标。不过，对投资者来说这并不是什么新鲜事。在1980年代，随着401(k)计划的出现，共同基金曾经历过类似的情况；在2000年代初，随着互联网泡沫的破裂，对冲基金也经历了这一现象；在经历了美国股市的残酷时期后，新兴市场也出现了这种情况；在2008年全球金融危机前夕，房地产基金也面临类似问题；而在十年前商品价格飙升时，能源基金也遭遇了这一挑战。在每种情况下，过多的资本都对表现产生了拖累。风险投资，以及更广泛的私募股权，很可能会成为下一个受害者。那么，投资者应该怎么做？简单的答案可能是“完全避开私募股权”，但这过于简单且目光短浅。对我来说，这个答案感觉就像因为Burberry、Under Armour和Abercrombie等公司过度扩张而放弃对零售公司的投资。毕竟，如果你这样做，你就会错过像Hermes、Costco、Ross Stores和Monster Beverage这样的成功企业。因此，感觉更好的做法是投资那些旨在实现法拉利地位的基金。那些保持纪律，坚持恩佐·法拉利所说的“比市场要求少交付一个投资或基金”的基金，同时避开那些因盲目追求增长而失去自我的基金。不过，也感觉可能还有更多独特的投资机会，尤其是在公开市场中，但这将留到未来的文章中讨论。
---------------

Is Ferrari a car company?

The obvious answer is yes, but not according to its CEO, Benedetto Vigna, who recently described the company’s business model saying,

“We are not – we are not – a car company. We are a luxury company that is also doing cars.”

That’s their differentiator. Their brand. Their “schtick.” And, it works, but not because it’s a marketing ploy. It works because Ferrari backs it up with its actions.

How so?

By adhering to its founder Enzo Ferrari’s “scarcity dictum” that declares,

“Ferrari will always deliver one car fewer than the market demands.”

Delivering one fewer than the market demands —

How many businesses can say they do that?

In my experience, very few. In fact, many do precisely the opposite.

Why?

Because more is almost always considered better. Size, scale, and growth are seductive. It is what attracts new investors and fresh capital. It is what grabs attention and headlines.

The trouble is that size and growth isn’t necessarily synonymous with strong performance.

Look no further than the past five years in the auto industry.

From 2020 to 2024, Ferrari sold fewer than 60,000 cars, but for an average price of over $450,000.

Now compare that with two of the largest car companies in the world by sales and revenue. Since 2020, Toyota has sold more than 52 million cars at an average price of $32,000. Meanwhile GM sold close to 30 million at an average price of $51,000.

As a result, while these behemoths have produced revenue north of a trillion dollars versus Ferraris of less than $30 billion, Ferrari’s net margins have been significantly higher at close to 23% last year versus an average of less than 6% for Toyota and GM.

The gap is even more pronounced on a gross margin basis.

The result has been drastically different stock price performance, as seen in the chart below (RACE = Ferrari, TM = Toyota, and GM = General Motors). Margins matter.

This isn’t limited to the auto industry. In fact, we see it everywhere from retailers to banks to technology companies, among others. Each is littered with failed growth stories, from Abercrombie and Under Armour, to Lehman Brothers and Countrywide, to GoPro, Clubhouse, and Peloton.

Most recently Burberry, the once iconic British fashion company, admitted that it too had fallen victim to unbridled pursuit of global growth. In doing so, it diluted its luxury image by becoming ‘too everywhere,’ which is why its new CEO is currently unwinding many of its most ambitious detours and refocusing on what built the brand. In his words, he wants to “lean into the assets that we already have and celebrate who we are.” Said another way, he wants to return to the Ferrari model.

If so, why don’t more companies follow Ferrari’s lead? Because as J.P. Morgan CEO, Jamie Dimon, is quoted as saying,

“CEO’s feel this tremendous pressure to grow. The problem is that sometimes you can’t grow. Many times, you don’t want to grow because growth can force you to take on bad customers/clients, excess risk, or excess leverage.”

Yet today, the euphoria surrounding growth, scale, and size is palpable. It’s practically all anyone talks about.

Every company wants to be classified as hyper-growth because doing so garners the highest valuations and attracts the most attention. To achieve this, many companies are chasing markets with massive total addressable markets (aka “TAMs”) and limitless opportunities. They prioritize scale and size over everything else. The trouble though, as Bill Gurley of Benchmark Capital recently highlighted, is that this has led to a dynamic akin to a “gavage.”

Never heard of a gavage?

Neither had I, but apparently it is the tube the French use to force-feed ducks to create foie gras.

Today, venture capital firms are doing something similar, but instead of force-feeding ducks with food, they are force feeding companies with capital. In doing so, this is forcing companies to invest in areas outside their circle of competence, hire people to sell products that aren’t ready for “go to market,” and to lose discipline more broadly. In Gurley’s words on a recent podcast titled “The Gift and Curse of Staying Private,”,

“It is forcing every company to go ‘all or nothing’ and ‘swing for the fences.’ It is no longer your grandfather’s startup business or your grandfather’s venture capital fund. It is a radically different world. And if you are a founder, you would like to be able to ignore all of it and build your company the way you want to build it. But if your competitor raises $300 million and is going to 10x the size of their sales force, or 50x it, you will be dead before you know it. You won’t be around. I think it’s bad for the ecosystem because it will remove all the small and middle outcomes and force businesses to just play grand slam home runs. But that’s what it feels like to me. And it feels like we didn’t learn anything from the days of 0% interest rates.”

Unsurprisingly, if this forced feeding of capital is causing companies to be less disciplined in how they allocate capital, there will undoubtably be a negative downstream effect on the venture and private equity funds that are backing them. In fact, we may already be seeing this in the form of diminishing returns and lower liquidity.

Amazingly though, even with the private markets already awash in capital, we are about to witness an even larger inflow in the form of individual investor capital. Look no further than the recent WSJ article titled, “Why Vanguard, Champion of Low-Fee Investing Joined the ‘Private Markets’ Craze,” that highlights how the champion of passive investing has been seduced into the world of alternatives.

Vanguard is far from alone though as KKR recently announced a partnership with the mutual fund complex, The Capital Group, in order to expand its alternative offerings to “non-accredited” investors. Meanwhile, Charles Schwab announced that it is entering the alternatives world in a meaningful way by advocating that they will be incorporated into its 401k and individual investor platforms.

This is nothing new for investors though. It happened to mutual funds in the 1980’s after the advent of the 401k, hedge funds in the early 2000’s following the dot.com collapse, emerging markets after a brutal stretch for U.S. stocks, real estate funds heading into the GFC, and energy funds when commodity prices spiked more than a decade ago. In each case, too much capital proved to be a drag on performance.

Venture capital, and potentially private equity more broadly, will likely be the next victim.

So, what should an investor do?

The simple answer might be to “avoid private equity all together,” but that’s too simplistic and short-sighted. To me, that answer feels like the equivalent of giving up on investing in retail companies all together because Burberry, Under Armour, and Abercrombie overplayed their hands. Afterall, if you did this, you would have missed the Hermes, CostCo’s, Ross Store’s, and Monster Beverage’s of the world.

As a result, it feels like the better course of action is to pursue the funds that aim to achieve Ferrari status. Those that have maintained the discipline to, in Enzo Ferrari’s words, “deliver one fewer (investment or fund) than the market demands,” while avoiding those that have gotten seduced by growth at all costs.

This said, it also feels like there might be even more unique opportunities, especially in the public markets, but that is for a future post.

无屏的未来 || A Screenless Future

2025-07-10T13:52:00+00:00

最近，我与Gin Lane的联合创始人Emmett Shine共进午餐，他是在AI与设计讨论中富有洞察力的声音之一。我们谈到了许多话题，其中一项是AI驱动世界中用户界面和体验的未来。他说过一句话让我印象深刻：“人类在没有屏幕的年代生存了数万年，他们还将继续在没有屏幕的年代生存数万年。” 越来越多地，我设想一个没有手机、平板或电脑的世界。一个以更沉浸式、主要依靠手部操作的科技体验为主导的世界。一个未来，我们的孩子看待屏幕的方式会像我们看待香烟一样。“你整天盯着屏幕？”他们会说，“你知道这对你的身体有多不好吗？” Meta和OpenAI显然也看到了这个现实。 Meta已投入数百亿美元研发AR/VR头显、Ray-Ban智能眼镜、神经接口手环，甚至全息可穿戴设备。 OpenAI宣布与乔尼·艾夫（Jony Ive）达成65亿美元的协议，以打造一款能够取代智能手机的AI设备。尽管屏幕依然无处不在，但它们已经开始显得过时。通过屏幕访问AI的强大功能是一种笨拙且低效的用户体验。无屏未来对科技意味着什么？要实现真正的无屏未来，我们可能需要三样东西：新的硬件、更自然的语音输入以及运动检测技术的飞跃式进步。（或者可能是读心术……但让我们不要急于求成。这部分留给埃隆吧。）在过去的几个月里，我们已经看到这三个领域涌现出大量初创公司。隐形硬件：AI驱动的魔法别针的梦想依然存在，至少在概念上。除了Meta和OpenAI，一些初创公司也开始探索那些感觉像珠宝或衣物一样自然、不像挂在胸前的迷你手机的设备。真实语音：那些“抱歉，我没听清”的日子已经屈指可数。柏林的Synthflow刚刚筹集了2000万美元，用于开发能够进行实时对话的AI代理，响应时间低于400毫秒。Wispr Flow刚刚宣布其AI语音输入应用获得了3000万美元的融资（它运行得非常顺畅）。在WWDC上，苹果重点介绍了其新的Apple Intelligence功能，并突出了语音方面的改进。此外，Y Combinator在春季2025批次之前发布了关于语音技术的请求建议书（RFP）。虽然看起来语音技术的格局已经确定，但仍有大量空间留给那些专注于语调、轮流对话和同理心等细节的胜者。因为一旦你认为“语音技术已经解决”，更好的产品就会胜出。人类级别的运动检测：运动感应技术已经超越了原始的手势控制。Ambient.ai筹集了超过5000万美元的资金，旨在为物理空间提供接近人类感知的体验。想象一下，一款能够通过手势（如挥手）来锁定前门的智能手表。这些创新共同构成了无屏用户体验的骨架。设计将使这一愿景更加丰满。无屏未来对设计意味着什么？去掉屏幕后，剩下的就是语气：语调、同理心、克制。个性将成为新的产品。在一个模型和API每季度都在商品化的大环境下，信任仍然以传统方式积累：一次一个人的反应。品牌DNA成为护城河，不是因为看起来漂亮，而是因为其行为方式：在被要求之前先说抱歉，讲一个缓解焦虑的笑话，或在沉默显得尊重时保持沉默。无屏未来对你们意味着什么？我们共同的科幻愿景常常描绘一个充满闪烁灯光和荧光屏幕的未来，如《银翼杀手》和《飞出个未来》等经典作品。但科技逐渐融入背景却有一种宁静的特质。反直觉的是，即使科技变得无处不在，如果它几乎不可见，它将为我们腾出空间，回归一种更人性化的生活。马克·维瑟（Mark Weiser）曾写道：“最深刻的科技是那些消失的科技。它们融入日常生活的织物中，直到与之无异。” 随着AI使这一现实成为可能，最强大的科技将不再要求我们的注意力，而是将其归还给我们。
---------------

Recently, I had lunch with Emmett Shine, co-founder of Gin Lane and a thoughtful voice in the conversation around AI and design.

Among other things, we talked about the future of user interfaces and experiences in an AI-driven world. He said something that really stuck with me: “humans existed without screens for hundreds of thousands of years. They will exist without screens for hundreds of thousands more.”

Increasingly, I envision a world without phones or tablets or computers. A world defined by a more immersive, primarily hands-free technological experience. A future where our children will view screens the way most of us view cigarettes. “You used to look at a screen all day?” they’ll say. “Do you know how bad that is for you?”

Meta and OpenAI clearly envision this reality, too.

Meta has invested hundreds of billions of dollars into AR/VR headsets, Ray-Ban smart glasses, a neural interface wristband, and even holographic wearables.

OpenAI announced a $6.5 billion deal with Jony Ive to create an AI device that can unseat the smartphone.

Though screens remain ubiquitous, they’re already beginning to feel outdated. It’s a clunky, poor user experience for accessing the power of AI.

What does a screenless future mean for tech? To reach a truly screenless future, we’ll likely need three things: new hardware, more natural voice dictation, and a step change in motion detection. (Or, possibly, mind reading…but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We’ll leave that to Elon.)

In the past few months, we’ve seen a flurry of startups in all three categories.

Stealth Hardware: The dream of a magical AI-powered pin still lives on, if only in concept for now. In addition to Meta and OpenAI, a number of startups have begun to explore devices that feel as natural as jewelry or clothing, and less like a mini smartphone strapped to your chest.

Genuine Voice: The days of “Sorry, I didn’t catch that” are numbered. Berlin’s Synthflow just raised $20 million to power AI agents that hold real-time conversations with sub-400 millisecond response times. Wispr Flow just announced a $30M round for their AI-dictation app (it works like a dream). During WWDC, Apple focused on their new Apple Intelligence features and highlighted improvements in voice. And, YC put out an RFP for voice technologies ahead of their Spring 2025 batch. It might seem like the die has already been cast, but there is still plenty of space for winners who focus on nuance like intonation, turn-taking, and empathy. Because the moment you think “voice is solved,” a better product will win.

Human-Level Motion Detection: Motion sensing has matured past rudimentary gesture controls. Ambient.ai has raised north of $50 million to deliver near-human perception in physical spaces. Imagine a watch that can sense gestures, like a wave, to lock your front door.

Together, these innovations form the skeleton of a screenless UX. Design is what will flesh out that vision.

What does a screenless future mean for design? Take the screen away and what’s left is tone: cadence, empathy, restraint. Personality becomes the new product. In a market where models and APIs commoditize by the quarter, trust still compounds the old-fashioned way: one human reaction at a time. Brand DNA becomes a moat not because it looks pretty, but because it behaves: saying sorry before it’s asked, cracking the joke that defuses anxiety, staying silent when silence feels like respect.

What does a screenless future mean for you? Our collective sci-fi vision of the future often features a sea of blinking lights and fluorescent screens in classics from Blade Runner to The Jetsons.

But there’s a peaceful quality to technology fading into the background. Counterintuitively, even if technology becomes ubiquitous, if it is also virtually invisible, it gives us space to get back to a life that is a little more, well, human.

Mark Weiser once wrote, “The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it.”

As AI makes that reality possible, the most powerful technology won’t demand our attention. It will give it back to us.

除了Open AI之外，价值产生在哪里？ || Where does value accrue beyond Open AI?

2025-06-27T13:05:00+00:00

首先出现了基础模型。接着是企业工具。接下来是消费者浪潮：数百万个日常决策、习惯和购买行为正通过AI重新定向。

但如何在巨大的、动态生成的、如影随形的AI面前进行构建？

OpenAI拥有显著的先发优势。而且它不仅仅是庞大，它无处不在。ChatGPT预计将在年底前达到10亿月活跃用户。换句话说，全球几乎每5个成年人中就有1个会与Altman的聊天机器人互动。

巨头往往凭借其规模优势获胜，特别是在消费者应用领域，网络效应的构建依赖于规模。在2000年代初，Google碾压了从AltaVista到Yelp再到MapQuest的所有竞争者。但即使Google也无法在社交领域（还记得Google+吗？）或构建一个能与Amazon竞争的电子商务引擎（比如Google Express？）。在一个垂直领域（即使是像搜索这样庞大的领域）的主导地位并不能保证在其他领域取得成功。

通用型人才无法或不愿深入的领域存在机会。消费者AI创始人现在应该在此构建：

复杂且受监管的行业

医疗、税务、保险、房地产：这些市场不会奖励“足够好”的答案，而是要求责任保障、工作流程整合和合规性。以FDA的AI/ML软件作为医疗设备框架为例：它要求预先指定的变更控制协议、生命周期监管和算法透明度。这将把OpenAI的“快速发布”优势转化为责任问题。

这种监管护城河正是为什么垂直领域专家即使使用OpenAI的模型也能获胜。是的，OpenAI现在提供了BAAs和企业隐私控制，但合规性基础设施不仅仅是关于数据处理，还包括审计追踪、临床验证和多年建立的监管关系。

你可能不会信任ChatGPT来帮你报税或处理信用卡的争议退款。而且这很好，因为OpenAI也不希望处理这些高风险的工作流程。

连接数字与物理世界

下一次消费者突破不会出现在聊天窗口中。它们将协调承包商、管理库存、安排配送时间，并处理晚上9点愤怒的客户来电。这种运营复杂性是OpenAI的致命弱点。

掌握最后一公里能创造防御性，因为它吸收了通用平台回避的复杂、现实世界的问题。这适用于从旅游酒店业到医疗、住宅建设和体育等所有领域。

Doctronics是一个很好的例子。你可能会向ChatGPT寻求一般的健康建议，但你会信任它诊断那个奇怪的痣或处理关键的保险索赔吗？乍一看，Doctronics的体验似乎和其他聊天机器人一样，但它的巧妙之处（以及ChatGPT无法与之竞争的原因）在于最后一步：AI分诊引导至远程医疗会话，甚至可能需要面对面的护理。

具有坚定信念的硬件

OpenAI显然在关注硬件机会。但即使对于科技巨头来说，硬件仍然是残酷的领域。Google需要收购Nest和Fitbit等公司才能深入实体产品领域，但大多数收购都失败了。Meta、Amazon和Microsoft都投入了数十亿美元用于硬件，但依然以软件为核心。

初创企业的机会在于具体性。一个专注于单一、执着使用场景的团队，围绕特定用途构建有主见的设备，拥有更大的发展空间。而OpenAI致力于通用智能，优秀的硬件需要特定智能——那种源于理解人们如何持有、携带和与产品共处的洞察。

WHOOP和Oura展示了个人健康领域的模式：从传感器到洞察再到行为的紧密循环，不断重复直至形成不可动摇的习惯。

我最近了解到一个酒店业的硬件概念，它可以根据个人偏好调整餐厅或酒店体验。我期待看到其他方式，硬件和软件如何在AI的下一阶段互动，特别是新进入者如何对待可穿戴设备和集成设备，最终让我们摆脱屏幕。

放大品味的创意工具

OpenAI并不具备创造力。没有LLM能展示真正的原创性：它们只是重组和重新组合现有模式。尽管人们对AI取代创意人才感到恐惧，但现实是AI将成为有史以来最强大的创意工具。

机会不在于取代人类创造力，而在于放大它。这需要理解的不仅是创作者创造了什么，还有他们如何思考、迭代和协作。今年大约有1000篇关于品味重要性的文章被撰写（我知道，因为我写过一篇），但这是真的——基础模型无法仅凭训练数据学习品味。

这就是我们启动AIR的原因，一个位于布鲁克林的创业驻地，专注于设计与AI交叉领域的构建。我们认为，创作者需要亲自掌控，以赋予AI初创公司创造力。而且，坦白说，Sam Altman并不以创造力或设计直觉著称（仅ChatGPT的命名惯例就显示出缺乏品牌意识）。

OpenAI可能掌控了大部分的消费者AI体验，但仍有大量空间让新进入者取得成功。历史的教训很明确：巨头收割平均值，而初创企业赢得边缘。

---------------

First came the foundation models. Then the enterprise tools. Next comes the consumer wave: millions of tiny daily decisions, habits, and purchases getting rerouted through AI.

But how do you build with a giant, dynamically generated, shadow looming over you?

OpenAI has a formidable head start. And it’s not just massive…it’s everywhere. ChatGPT is likely to reach over 1 billion monthly users before the end of the year. In other words, nearly 1 out of every 5 adults across the world will be be interacting with Altman’s chatbot.

Giants tend to win by default, particularly in consumer applications where gravity is critical for building network effects. In the early 2000s, Google steamrolled everything from AltaVista to Yelp to MapQuest. But even Google couldn’t crack social (remember Google+?) or build an e-commerce engine to rival Amazon (how about Google Express?). Dominance in one vertical (even a massive one like search) doesn’t guarantee success everywhere else.

The opening exists where generalists can’t or won’t go deep. Here’s where consumer AI founders should build now:

Complex, regulated industries

Healthcare, taxes, insurance, real estate: these markets don’t reward “good enough answers” — they demand liability coverage, workflow integration, and regulatory compliance. Take the FDA’s AI/ML Software-as-a-Medical-Device framework: it requires pre-specified change control protocols, lifecycle oversight, and algorithmic transparency. That transforms OpenAI’s “ship fast” advantage into a liability.

This regulatory moat is why vertical specialists can win even while using OpenAI’s models underneath. Yes, OpenAI offers BAAs and enterprise privacy controls now, but compliance infrastructure isn’t just about data handling, it’s about audit trails, clinical validation, and regulatory relationships built over years.

You probably wouldn’t trust ChatGPT to file your taxes or dispute chargebacks on your credit card. And that’s good, because OpenAI doesn’t want to handle those risky workflows either.

Bridging digital and physical worlds

The next consumer breakthroughs won’t live in a chat window. They’ll orchestrate contractors, manage inventory, coordinate delivery windows, and handle angry customers calling at 9 PM. This operational complexity is OpenAI’s kryptonite.

Owning the last mile creates defensibility because it absorbs messy, real-world problems that general platforms avoid. This applies to everything from travel and hospitality to healthcare, homebuilding, and sports.

Doctronics is a good example. You might look to ChatGPT for general health advice, but are you going to trust it to diagnose that strange mole or handle a crucial insurance claim? At first blush, the Doctronics experience feels like any other chatbot — but the genius (and the reason ChatGPT won’t be able to compete with them) — is in the final step: AI triage leads to a telehealth session and, maybe, even in-person care if needed.

Hardware with conviction

OpenAI clearly eyeing hardware opportunities. But hardware remains brutal terrain, even for tech giants. Google needed acquisitions like Nest and Fitbit to go deeper into physical products, and most failed anyway. Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft have all poured billion into hardware, but still lead with software.

The opening for startups is specificity. A focused team building opinionated devices around a single, obsessive use case has room to run. While OpenAI optimizes for general intelligence, great hardware demands specific intelligence — the kind that comes from understanding exactly how people will hold, carry, and live with your product. WHOOP and Oura show the pattern in personal health: a tight loop from sensor to insight to behavior, repeated until it becomes an unshakeable habit.

I recently learned of a hardware concept in hospitality that adapts a restaurant or hotel experience based on your personal preferences. I’m eager to see other ways that hardware and software interplay in this next phase of AI, and particularly excited to see how new entrants approach wearables and integrated devices to finally divorce us from our screens.

Creative tools that amplify taste

OpenAI is not creative. No LLM demonstrates genuine originality: they remix and recombine existing patterns. As much fear exists around AI displacing creatives, the reality is that AI will become the most powerful creative tool ever invented.

The opportunity isn’t in replacing human creativity; it’s amplifying it. This requires understanding not just what creators make, but how they think, iterate, and collaborate. Approximately 1,000 thought pieces have been written this year about the importance of taste (I know, because I wrote one); but it’s true — foundation models can’t learn taste from training data alone.

This is why we launched AIR, a Brooklyn residency for founders building at the intersection of design and AI. We believe creatives will need to take the wheel in imbuing AI startups with creativity. And, let’s face it, Sam Altman is not known for his creativity or design instincts (the naming conventions at ChatGPT alone decry a lack of brand know-how).

OpenAI might own the majority of the consumer AI experience, but there’s plenty of room for new entrants to succeed, The lesson from history is clear: giants harvest the averages, but startups win the edges.

揭秘协作基金的4倍DPI基金I || Inside Collaborative Fund’s 4x DPI Fund I

2025-06-25T17:31:00+00:00

对一只顶级十分之一基金的分析。

最近，感觉我的互联网泡沫的每个角落都在谈论风险投资回报——有时是Carta的图表，有时是泄露的DPI表格。我看到过关于早期回报不佳、巨型基金膨胀、“风投傲慢指数”、99百分位退出门槛的提高，以及VC的私募股权化等话题。

但尽管有这么多讨论，我却没看到太多关于早期基金的回报指标如何随时间演变的详细分析。这是一个关键的空白。许多分析聚焦于仍处于中期回报周期的基金，而账面增值可能讲述的是不完整甚至误导性的故事。

因此，我整理了Collaborative第一只基金的数据，这只2011年成立的基金如今已接近完全退出。它提供了一个具体视角，展示风险投资回报如何在一只基金的整个生命周期中展开。

Fund 1规模较小：共部署了800万美元，投资了50个项目。单笔投资金额从约1万美元到约40万美元不等，平均约为10万美元，包括初始轮和后续轮。该基金专注于美国市场，不设行业限制，主要投资于种子轮至A轮阶段。

投资组合指标

以下是对该基金在生命周期内几个核心指标的表现：

下面是一张回报数据的折线图：

出资在第四年完成，这在早期基金中是典型的。分红直到第四年才开始，并在第十年达到峰值：

回报指标要点

总体表现强劲：该基金实现了4.1倍的净DPI——稳居前十分之一。作为参考，PitchBook将2011年基金的90百分位设为3.0倍。

耐心溢价：在第十年，DPI为0.9倍。目前有很多关于风险投资流动性不足的讨论。在投资十年后，这只基金本可能成为讨论焦点。但到了第11年，DPI跃升至3.8倍。流动性可能缓慢，但价值仍在持续增长。

IRR的过山车：净IRR在第六年达到18%（基于账面收益），随后在中间几年有所下滑，直到第11年因一次重大退出而飙升至22%。即使最终结果强劲，延迟也可能损害IRR。

仍有部分增值未实现：即使在14年后，该基金仍保持4.1倍的净DPI和4.6倍的净TVPI。这意味着约0.5倍的增值尚未实现。这引出了经典的基金生命周期末期问题：是选择收割尾部还是继续持有？

浅显的J曲线：早期的账面增值使TVPI在第二年就超过了1倍，即使在分红开始前，有限合伙人（LPs）的账面价值也已保持在水位之上。

DPI究竟来自哪里？

回报高度集中。八只公司——Upstart、Lyft、Scopely、Blue Bottle Coffee、Maker Studios、Gumroad、Reddit和Kickstarter——几乎贡献了所有分红。

这些公司共投入了约80万美元，却带来了3760万美元的回报——平均倍数高达45倍。其余42只投资，代表了720万美元的投入，仅带来了200万美元的回报（倍数为0.3倍）。

在这些八只公司中，结果差异显著：其中一只公司单独贡献了所有现金回报的73%。再加上接下来的三只公司，累计占比已超过90%。倍数从1.4倍到115倍不等——这说明了即使在“成功”公司中，回报的集中性和波动性依然显著。

投资组合启示

幂律：八只公司贡献了约95%的全部回报。其中一只公司单独贡献了73%。

资本效率：前八只公司投入不到100万美元，却带来了3760万美元的回报。

单笔投资金额≠回报倍数：一些最大的赢家是单笔投资低于10万美元的项目，而一些较大的投资却完全无回报。限制单笔投资金额可以在不损害基金表现的前提下限制潜在损失。

赢家的差异性：即使在赢家之中，倍数也从个位数低至超过100倍——这表明并非每个赢家都必须是颠覆性项目，但少数大额异常值可能产生巨大影响。

结论

我们认为，早期风险投资最大的风险不是失败，而是错过（或错误评估）异常值。在Fund I中，八只公司几乎贡献了所有分红。其中单笔投资就占DPI的70%以上。这就是幂律效应的体现。

Collaborative的故事如今已持续15年，有四只早期基金进入收割期。其中三只位列PitchBook的前四分之一，两只则进入前十分之一（按DPI计算）。在每只基金中，少数公司都贡献了大部分回报。或许这些内容会成为未来文章的素材。

在此之前，希望这篇分析能提醒大家，不要轻信基于未实现基金的风险投资表现叙事。一些趋势是真实的，值得关注。但许多响亮的信号可能随着基金成熟而减弱或逆转。在它们完全兑现之前，其故事仍在书写中。

复制链接

---------------

A breakdown of a top-decile fund.

Lately, it feels like every corner of my internet bubble is talking about venture returns—Carta charts one day, leaked DPI tables the next. I’ve seen posts on lagging vintages, mega-fund bloat, the “Venture Arrogance Score”, the rising bar for 99th‑percentile exits, and the PE-ification of VC.

But for all that noise, I haven’t seen much that actually walks through how returns metrics evolve over time in an early-stage fund. That’s a crucial gap. Many analyses focus on funds that are still mid-vintage, where paper markups can tell an incomplete or even misleading story.

So I pulled the numbers on Collaborative’s first fund, a 2011 vintage that’s now nearly fully realized. It offers a concrete look at how venture performance can unfold across a fund’s full lifecycle.

Fund 1 was small: $8M deployed across 50 investments. Check sizes ranged from ~$10K to ~$400K, averaging around $100K for both initial and follow-on rounds. It was US-focused, sector-agnostic, and mostly pre-seed through Series A.

Portfolio metrics

Without further ado, here’s how the fund performed over its lifetime across a few core metrics:

Below is a line chart of the returns data:

Contributions wrapped up by year 4, which is typical for early-stage funds. Distributions didn’t start until year 4 and peaked around year 10:

Returns metrics takeaways

Strong overall performance: The fund achieved a 4.1x net DPI—solidly top-decile. For context, PitchBook pegs 3.0x as the 90th percentile for funds in the 2011 vintage.

The patience premium: At year 10, DPI was 0.9x. There’s a lot of discussion right now around the lack of venture liquidity. 10 years in, this fund could’ve been a talking point. But then, in year 11, DPI jumped to 3.8x. Liquidity might be slow, but value can still be building.

The IRR roller coaster: Net IRR hit 18% in year 6 (off paper gains), sagged in the middle years, then popped to 22% in year 11 after a major exit. IRR can be hurt by delays, even when final outcomes are strong.

Some juice still left: Even after 14 years, the fund sits at 4.1x net DPI and 4.6x net TVPI. That means roughly 0.5x of upside is unrealized. That tees up the classic end‑of‑life question: seek to harvest the tail or ride it out?

Shallow J-curve: Early markups lifted TVPI above 1x by Year 2, keeping LPs above water on paper even before distributions began.

Where did the DPI actually come from?

Returns were highly concentrated. Eight companies—Upstart, Lyft, Scopely, Blue Bottle Coffee, Maker Studios, Gumroad, Reddit, and Kickstarter—drove nearly all distributions.

Together, these accounted for just $0.8M of invested capital but returned $37.6M—an average multiple of 45x. The remaining 42 investments, representing $7.2M, returned only $2.0M (a 0.3x multiple).

Within those eight, outcomes varied widely: one company alone delivered 73% of all cash returned. Adding the next three brought the cumulative share past 90%. Multiples ranged from 1.4x to 115x—illustrating just how concentrated and variable even a “winning” subset can be.

Portfolio lessons

Power law: Eight companies drove ~95% of all returns. One contributed 73% on its own.

Capital efficiency: Less than $1M into the top eight generated $37.6M back.

Check size ≠ upside: Some of the biggest winners were sub-$100K checks, while some larger bets in the tail went to zero. Limiting ticket size can cap downside without necessarily hampering fund performance.

Winner variance: Even among the winners, multiples ranged from low single digits up to well over 100x, underscoring that not every winner needs to be a moonshot but a few big outliers can matter tremendously.

Conclusion

We believe the biggest risk in early-stage VC isn’t failure. It’s missing (or mis-sizing) the outlier. In Fund I, eight companies drove nearly all distributions. One check alone accounted for more than 70% of DPI. This is the power law at work.

Collaborative’s story now spans 15 years with four early funds in harvest mode. Three rank in PitchBook’s top quartile with two in the top decile by DPI. In each, a small number of companies drove the bulk of returns. Perhaps these will make for future posts.

Until then, I hope this serves as a reminder to take venture performance narratives based on unrealized funds with a grain of salt. Some trends are real and worth watching. But many of the loudest signals may fade or reverse as funds mature. Until they’re fully played out, their stories are still being written.

Copy Link

再现使塞丘亚的走廊充满活力的条件 || "Reproducing the conditions that made Sequoia’s hallways electric"

2025-06-18T13:38:00+00:00

协作基金最近推出了AIR，一种以设计驱动的人工智能产品为特色的新型加速器。它从那些在各自时代重塑创意可能性的机构中汲取灵感，这些机构在技术与文化转折点上汇聚了看似不可能的合作伙伴。

在招募第一期成员时，我们与那些参与创造那些标志性时刻的人交谈。几周前，我们邀请麻省理工媒体实验室创始人尼古拉斯·内格罗蓬特反思当文化与技术碰撞并创造新的思维方式时会发生什么。

今天，我们与前Sequoia合伙人汤姆·麦克默里交谈，他帮助塑造了硅谷的第一个黄金时代。汤姆曾是Yahoo、Redback Networks、C-Cube、NetApp以及重要的是Nvidia的早期投资者。他现在担任多个专注于科学和影响的董事会成员。我们与他讨论了模式识别、资本纪律以及为何他是AIR的投资者。

克雷格·夏皮罗：汤姆，你加入Sequoia正是第一波互联网浪潮开始形成的时候。你的投资组合堪称一个名人堂名单。当时你使用的核心筛选标准是什么？

汤姆·麦克默里：在互联网领域，很清楚应该投资哪些网络项目——带宽需求很高。在纯互联网领域则不太清楚。我们的尽职调查流程已经相当成熟，因此我们不断开发更精细的筛选标准，并利用我们在芯片和企业软件方面的核心能力。在Nvidia的案例中，我们有我称之为Sequoia时刻——那种美妙的非线性尽职调查流程，经过对业务的分析后，我们只留下一个决定性的关键问题。我们的独特优势在于，我们对业务的了解往往比创始人多很多倍，我们清楚地知道真正的风险在哪里。

对于像Nvidia这样的公司，我们在Cypress、Microchip、LSI Logic和Cadence的投资经验，加上在游戏公司方面的经验，意味着市场风险非常低。我们能够轻松地对创始人进行尽职调查，因为许多创始人曾为Sequoia合伙人的好友工作——这正是我们在1990年代的强项。在互联网浪潮中，我们通过在Cisco和Yahoo的投资获得了特殊的洞察力。他们是市场先驱，比我们早3-5年看到世界。他们多次指明方向，而我们只是迅速跟进。

谈到Nvidia，请描述一下当杰森·黄第一次向Sequoia推介时发生了什么。

Sequoia技术合伙人、LSI Logic（杰森在创立Nvidia之前曾任职于此）的CEO威尔夫·科里根告诉他，应该与Sequoia的唐·瓦伦丁谈谈他的“芯片构想”。杰森推介了不断演化的游戏世界和对更高性能的需求。说实话，我当时并不清楚为什么要投资这家公司。但我们不断提出更深入的问题，关于团队、竞争、分销，得到了坚实的答案。

大约在推介90分钟时，皮埃尔·拉蒙德问杰森芯片有多大。杰森回答“12毫米”。皮埃尔看向唐和马克，他们点头，我们当场决定投资。我们领投了A轮，马克加入了董事会。剩下的就是历史了。

关键问题并不在于市场规模或愿景——而是“他们能否制造芯片，实现性能和价格点？”这就是为什么芯片尺寸问题成为决定性因素。Sequoia的半导体合伙人唐、皮埃尔和马克立刻理解了其重要性。

快进到今天。协作基金刚刚在纽约推出了AIR，一个专注于人工智能的居民计划。你就是投资者！为什么？

因为你在重现使Sequoia在90年代的走廊充满活力的条件——构建者、研究者和设计师之间的交叉融合，他们在同一房间内争论、原型设计和迭代。伟大的公司很少是单打独斗的；它们更像是爵士乐队，共同演奏一个和谐的旋律。

从Sequoia时期，哪些早期阶段的模式识别应该让我们的AIR创始人刻在白板上？

秘诀是依靠你的成功，从中学习，并在扩展过程中加以应用，不断迭代并继续前进。

“保持低成本直到它变得痛苦。”资本效率迫使清晰。在互联网泡沫破裂中幸存下来的公司，其烧钱速度低于A轮融资额。

批评者担心人工智能会消除工作或放大偏见。你见证过每一个技术周期：你的指南针指向哪里？

每一轮浪潮开始时都混乱不堪。但历史表明两个真理始终存在：

工作演变的速度快于其消失的速度。Cisco终结了一些电路交换工作，却催生了整个网络工程师群体。

偏见跟随数据，而非硅芯片。修正训练数据，就能解决80%的问题。这是人类的工作，而非机器的命运。

“向善的力量”在企业家将护栏融入商业模式，而不仅仅是代码库时才会显现。

最后一个问题。一位创始人带着坚定信念走进AIR。在决定是否投资之前，你只有一个问题——是什么？

我会寻找那个“Sequoia时刻”——在所有关于团队、市场和技术的问题之后，我们确定决定成功的关键单一因素。对于Nvidia来说，就是“芯片有多宽？”有时候，正是这些看似简单的技术问题揭示了一家公司能否实现其愿景。

完美。谢谢，汤姆。愿我们打造值得存在的AI公司。

也愿创始人铭记：进步并非必然——人们创造它。

---------------

Collaborative Fund recently launched AIR, a new kind of accelerator for design-led AI products. It draws inspiration from the institutions that reshaped creative possibility in their time, places that brought together unlikely collaborators at key moments of technological and cultural inflection.

As we recruit for the first cohort, we’re talking to people who had a hand in creating those lighting rod moments. A few weeks ago we asked Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the MIT Media Lab, to reflect on what happens when culture and technology collide to create new ways of thinking.

Today we’re talking to Tom McMurray, former General Partner at Sequoia, who helped shape Silicon Valley’s first golden age. Tom was an early investor in Yahoo, Redback Networks, C-Cube, NetApp—and, importantly, Nvidia. He now serves on multiple boards focused on science and impact. We spoke to him about pattern recognition, capital discipline, and why he’s an investor in AIR.

Craig Shapiro: Tom, you joined Sequoia just as the first Internet wave was forming. Your portfolio reads like a Hall of Fame roster. What were the core filters you used back then?

Tom McMurray: It was very clear where to invest in the networking space—bandwidth was in high demand. It was less clear in the pure Internet space. Our diligence process was pretty established so we continually developed more refined filters and leveraged off our core capability in chips and enterprise software. In the case of Nvidia we had what I call a Sequoia moment—that wonderful nonlinear diligence process where after parsing through the business, we reached a point where there’s only a single question left to decide. Our secret sauce was that we often knew many times more than the founders did about their business. We understood where the real risks were.

For companies like Nvidia, our expertise in semiconductors from investments in Cypress, Microchip, LSI Logic, and Cadence, plus our experience with gaming companies, meant the market risks were very low. We could easily do due diligence on the founders because many worked for friends of Sequoia Partners—this was our sweet spot in the 1990s. And in the Internet wave, we had special insight through our investments in Cisco and Yahoo. They were market pioneers who saw the world 3-5 years ahead of us. They pointed the way many times, and we just jumped on it.

Speaking of Nvidia, walk us through what happened when Jensen Huang first pitched Sequoia.

Wilf Corrigan, a Sequoia Technology Partner and CEO at LSI Logic (where Jensen worked before starting Nvidia), told him to talk to Don Valentine at Sequoia about his “chip idea.” Jensen pitched the evolving game world and the need for more performance. Honestly, I had no idea at that point why we should invest in the company. But we asked harder and harder questions about team, competition, distribution, and got solid answers.

About 90 minutes into the pitch, Pierre Lamond asked Jensen how big the chip was. Jensen said “12 mm.” Pierre looked at Don and Mark; they nodded, and we committed to the investment on the spot. We led the Series A and Mark joined the board. The rest is history.

The critical question wasn’t about market size or vision—it was “can they build the chip, get the performance, and the price point?” That’s why the chip size question was the deciding factor. The semiconductor partners at Sequoia—Don, Pierre, and Mark—understood the significance immediately.

Fast-forward to today. Collaborative Fund just launched AIR, an AI residency in New York. You are an investor! Why?

Because you’re reproducing the conditions that made Sequoia’s hallways electric in the ’90s—cross-pollination of builders, researchers, and designers who argue, prototype, and iterate in the same room. Great companies are rarely solo acts; they’re jazz ensembles riffing toward a common groove.

What early-stage pattern recognition from Sequoia days should our AIR founders tattoo on their whiteboards?

The secret is to lean on your wins, learn from them, apply it as you expand, iterate, and keep going.

“Stay cheap until it hurts.” Capital efficiency forces clarity. The companies that survived the dot-com crash had burn rates lower than their Series A checks.

Critics worry AI will erase jobs or amplify bias. You’ve seen every tech cycle: where’s your compass pointing?

Every wave starts messy. But history says two truths persist:

Jobs evolve faster than they evaporate. Cisco killed some circuit-switch jobs yet birthed the entire network-engineer class.

Bias follows data, not silicon. Fix the training data, and you fix 80 percent of the problem. That’s human homework, not machine destiny.

The “force for good” part kicks in when entrepreneurs bake guardrails into the business model, not just the codebase.

Last one. A founder walks into AIR with nothing but conviction. You’ve got one question before you decide to invest—what is it?

I’d look for that “Sequoia Moment”—where after all the questions about team, market, and technology, we identify the single critical factor that determines success. For Nvidia, it was “how many millimeters wide is the chip?” Sometimes, it’s these seemingly simple technical questions that reveal whether a company can execute on its vision.

Golden. Thanks, Tom. Here’s to building AI companies that deserve to exist.

And to founders who remember: progress isn’t inevitable—people make it so.

非常糟糕的建议 || Very Bad Advice

2025-06-12T18:54:00+00:00

一个男孩曾问查理·芒格：“你对我这样的普通人有什么建议，才能在生活中取得成功？”芒格回答：“不要使用可卡因。不要竞速火车到终点。避免所有与艾滋病相关的情况。” 通常很难知道什么会带来快乐，但很容易识别什么会带来痛苦。建造房屋是复杂的，而摧毁它却很简单，我认为在生活的大多数领域都能找到类似的类比。在试图取得进步时，翻转视角，专注于如何避免退步，可能会有所帮助。以下是一些非常糟糕的建议：让期望的增长速度超过收入。在没有全面了解他人生活的情况下，嫉妒他人的成功。为了追求地位而牺牲独立性。将净资产与自我价值相联系（包括你自己和他人）。模仿那些想要与你不同事物的人的策略。根据粉丝数量来决定信任谁。将参与等同于洞察力。让嫉妒引导你的目标。自动将财富等同于智慧。假设新的多巴胺刺激是长期快乐的良好指标。将每场对话视为一场竞争，试图赢得胜利。假设人们在25岁之后还关心你上过哪所学校。假设所有问题的解决方案都是更多的钱。以不留余地的方式最大化效率。以交易性思维而非关系导向来行事。优先捍卫你已有的信念，而非学习新事物。假设人们所表达的内容完全代表他们所知道或相信的一切。相信过去是黄金时代，现在是疯狂时期，未来注定衰退。假设你的成功完全归功于努力，而失败则完全是因为运气不好。以精确、确定和自信的方式进行预测。为了短期的赞誉而最大化声誉。重视看起来忙碌的表象。从不怀疑自己的族群，却对其他人持怀疑态度。假设努力比结果更能带来回报。相信你的怀旧情绪是准确的。将你幕后的生活与他人精心挑选的高光时刻进行比较。低估适应能力，假设每个问题都会持续存在，每个优势都将永远保持。将不确定性作为不行动的借口。以他人最糟糕的状态来评判他们，以自己最好的状态来评判自己。假设学习在你毕业那天就结束了。将耐心视为懒惰。将金钱视为评分标准而非工具。将对值得信赖之人的忠诚视为奴役。根据你想要和需要某事的程度来调整你相信它的意愿。具有部落意识，将一切视为社会等级的斗争。对自己容易产生后悔的倾向毫无察觉。只从自己的经历中学习。与那些你清楚知道道德水平低于你的人交朋友。
---------------

A boy once asked Charlie Munger, “What advice do you have for someone like me to succeed in life?” Munger replied: “Don’t do cocaine. Don’t race trains to the track. And avoid all AIDS situations.”

It’s often hard to know what will bring joy but easy to spot what will bring misery. Building a house is complex; destroying one is simple, and I think you’ll find a similar analogy in most areas of life. When trying to get ahead it can be helpful to flip things around, focusing on how to not fall back.

Here are a few pieces of very bad advice.

Allow your expectations to grow faster than your income

Envy others’ success without having a full picture of their lives.

Pursue status at the expense of independence.

Associate net worth with self-worth (for you and others).

Mimic the strategy of people who want something different than you do.

Choose who to trust based on follower count.

Associate engagement with insight.

Let envy guide your goals.

Automatically associate wealth with wisdom.

Assume a new dopamine hit is a good indication of long-term joy.

View every conversation as a competition to win.

Assume people care where you went to school after age 25.

Assume the solution to all your problems is more money.

Maximize efficiency in a way that leaves no room for error.

Be transactional vs. relationship driven.

Prioritize defending what you already believe over learning something new.

Assume that what people can communicate is 100% of what they know or believe.

Believe that the past was golden, the present is crazy, and the future is destined for decline.

Assume that all your success is due to hard work and all your failure is due to bad luck.

Forecast with precision, certainty, and confidence.

Maximize for immediate applause over long-term reputation.

Value the appearance of looking busy.

Never doubt your tribe but be skeptical of everyone else’s.

Assume effort is rewarded more than results.

Believe that your nostalgia is accurate.

Compare your behind-the-scenes life to others’ curated highlight reel.

Discount adaptation, assuming every problem will persist and every advantage will remain

Use uncertainty as an excuse for inaction.

Judge other people at their worst and yourself at your best.

Assume learning is complete upon your last day of school.

View patience as laziness.

Use money as a scorecard instead of a tool.

View loyalty (to those who deserve it) as servitude.

Adjust your willingness to believe something by how much you want and need it to be true.

Be tribal, view everything as a battle for social hierarchy.

Have no sense of your own tendency to regret.

Only learn from your own experiences.

Make friends with people whose morals you know are beneath your own.

不同类型的聪明 || Different Kinds of Smart

2025-06-11T16:39:00+00:00

“我年纪越大，就越意识到聪明有很多种。有很多种聪明。也有很多种愚蠢。” ——杰夫·贝索斯历史上最聪明的投资者在20年前的这一周破产了。他们是在有史以来最辉煌的牛市中发生的。长期资本管理公司（LTCM）的故事比悲伤更引人入胜。那些在学术上比以往任何群体都更聪明的投资者却失去了所有的一切，这说明了智力的局限性。这也印证了贝索斯的观点：聪明有很多种。我们事后才明白，LTCM团队拥有某种聪明的非凡量，但缺乏一些不容易衡量的细腻类型，比如谦逊、想象力，以及承认70亿人的集体动机无法用Excel表格总结。 “聪明”是解决问题的能力。解决问题是完成任务的能力。而完成任务需要的远不止数学证明和死记硬背。几种不同的聪明类型： 1. 理解你的领域对他人决策的重要性并不比其他几十个领域更高，这促使你花时间将你的专业知识与其他学科联系起来。成为经济学专家有助于你理解一个纯粹由经济学主导的世界。但现实并非如此。现实由经济学、心理学、社会学、生物学、物理学、政治学、生理学、生态学等共同主导。几年前，帕特里克·奥肖内西曾给他的读书俱乐部写过一封邮件：与我日益增长的信念一致，即阅读其他领域比阅读自己领域更有生产力，因此这份清单上没有投资书籍。这句话中蕴含了如此多的聪明。在多个领域拥有B+水平的聪明人，可能比在单一领域拥有A+水平但忽视该领域只是复杂拼图中一部分的人更了解世界运作方式。几种不同的聪明类型： 2. 一种杠铃型性格，一边是自信，一边是焦虑；愿意做出大胆的举措，但始终以确保生存为最高优先级。一些相关思考： “商业中唯一无法原谅的罪过就是现金流枯竭。”——哈罗德·吉内恩 “为了获取他们并不需要且没有的钱，他们冒险失去了自己拥有且需要的东西。这纯粹是愚蠢。如果你为了对你不重要的东西而冒险对你重要的东西，这根本就没有意义。”——巴菲特对LTCM崩盘的评论。 “我想我们一直害怕破产。”——迈克尔·莫里茨解释 Sequoia 四十年的成功。关键在于意识到，那些可能比你更聪明的人，虽然今年或明年表现更好，但如果没有对错误保持焦虑，他们更可能在遇到意外时被击垮或放弃。焦虑为你的大胆投资提供了生存的机会，使其能够成长到有意义的规模。几种不同的聪明类型： 3. 理解肯·伯恩斯比历史教科书更受欢迎，是因为事实没有意义，除非人们关注它们，而人们关注并记住的是好故事。一个有良好想法的讲故事者，总是比一个拥有伟大想法却希望事实能为自己说话的人更具影响力。人们常常疑惑为什么那么多缺乏思考的人会进入政府。答案很简单：政治家竞选是为了制定政策，而不是制定政策为了赢得选举。对选民最有说服力的不是想法是否正确，而是它是否讲述一个符合他们对世界看法和信念的故事。很难过分强调这一点：事实的主要作用是赋予故事可信度。但故事始终是说服的关键。关注信息本身与关注实质内容，不仅是一种独特的技能，也是很容易被忽视的。几种不同的聪明类型： 4. 谦逊不在于意识到自己可能犯错，而在于考虑到你经历的世界如此有限，你很可能犯错，尤其是在了解他人如何思考和决策方面。在学术上被衡量为聪明的人，更有可能迅速被安排到责任重大的职位。有了责任，他们必须做出影响他人的决策。但许多聪明人经历的职业路径与那些智力较低的人完全不同，这使他们难以理解他人如何思考——他们经历了什么，如何看待世界，如何解决问题，面临什么问题，被什么所驱动，等等。最明显的例子是那位聪明的商学院教授，他的思维与成功经营本地洗衣店的家伙重叠可能不到一毫米。许多首席执行官、经理、政治家和监管者都有同样的缺陷。一种微妙的聪明是认识到，赋予你决策权力的智力并不意味着你理解或与他人产生共鸣。事实上，你很可能并不理解。因此，你刻意去倾听和同理那些与你经历不同的人，尽管你因平均绩点而拥有为他们做决策的权威。几种不同的聪明类型： 5. 说服自己和他人放弃即时满足，通常通过战略性的分心。每个人都了解著名的棉花糖实验，其中那些能够延迟吃一个棉花糖以换取两个后来吃的孩子，最终在人生中表现更好。但实验中最重要的部分往往被忽视。那些表现出耐心的孩子通常不是靠单纯的意志力做到的。大多数孩子如果坐在那里盯着棉花糖，都会接受第一个。那些耐心的孩子通过分心来延迟满足。他们躲在桌子下，或者唱歌，或者摆弄鞋子。棉花糖实验的心理学家沃尔特·米歇尔后来写道： “在儿童中，延迟时间最重要的相关因素是注意力的分配，即他们在延迟期间如何集中注意力：那些关注奖励，从而激活了热系统的人，往往延迟时间较短；而那些将注意力集中在其他地方，通过分心来抑制热系统的人，延迟时间更长。” 延迟满足并不是围绕自己创造诱惑并希望拒绝它们。没有人擅长这一点。处理长期思维的聪明方式是享受日常的工作，这样最终的奖励不会不断萦绕你的脑海。更多关于这个主题的内容： “自己成功的代价” “冲突的技能组合”
---------------

“The older I get the more I realize how many kinds of smart there are. There are a lot of kinds of smart. There are a lot of kinds of stupid, too.”

– Jeff Bezos

The smartest investors of all time went bankrupt 20 years ago this week. They did it during the greatest bull market of all time.

The story of Long Term Capital Management is more fascinating than sad. That investors with more academic smarts than perhaps any group before or since managed to lose everything says a lot about the limits of intelligence. It also highlights Bezos’s point: There are many kinds of smarts. We know – in hindsight – the LTCM team had epic amounts of one kind of smarts, but lacked some of the nuanced types that aren’t easily measured. Humility. Imagination. Accepting that the collective motivations of 7 billion people can’t be summarized in Excel.

“Smart” is the ability to solve problems. Solving problems is the ability to get stuff done. And getting stuff done requires way more than math proofs and rote memorization.

A few different kinds of smarts:

Accepting that your field is no more important or influential to other people’s decisions than dozens of other fields, pushing you to spend your time connecting the dots between your expertise and other disciplines.

Being an expert in economics would help you understand the world if the world were governed purely by economics. But it’s not. It’s governed by economics, psychology, sociology, biology, physics, politics, physiology, ecology, and on and on.

Patrick O’Shaughnessy wrote an email to his book club years ago:

Consistent with my growing belief that it is more productive to read around one’s field than in one’s field, there are no investing books on this list.

There is so much smarts in that sentence. Someone with B+ intelligence in several fields likely has a better grasp of how the world works than someone with A+ intelligence in one field but an ignorance of that field just being one piece of a complicated puzzle.

A barbell personality with confidence on one side and paranoia on the other; willing to make bold moves but always within the context of making survival the top priority.

A few thoughts on this:

“The only unforgivable sin in business is to run out of cash.” – Harold Geneen

“To make money they didn’t have and didn’t need, they risked what they did have and did need. And that is just plain foolish. If you risk something important to you for something unimportant to you, it just doesn’t make any sense.” – Buffett on the LTCM meltdown.

“I think we’ve always been afraid of going out of business.” – Michael Moritz explaining Sequoia’s four decades of success.

A key here is realizing there are smart people who may perform better than you this year or next, but without a paranoid room for error they are more likely to get wiped out, or give up, when they eventually come across something they didn’t expect. Paranoia gives your bold bets a fighting chance at surviving long enough to grow into something meaningful.

Understanding that Ken Burns is more popular than history textbooks because facts don’t have any meaning unless people pay attention to them, and people pay attention to, and remember, good stories.

A good storyteller with a decent idea will always have more influence than someone with a great idea who hopes the facts will speak for themselves. People often wonder why so many unthoughtful people end up in government. The answer is easy: Politicians do not win elections to make policies; they make policies to win elections. What’s most persuasive to voters isn’t whether an idea is right, but whether it narrates a story that confirms what they see and believe in the world.

It’s hard to overstate this: The main use of facts is their ability to give stories credibility. But the stories are always what persuade. Focusing on the message as much as the substance is not only a unique skill; it’s an easy one to overlook.

Humility not in the idea that you could be wrong, but given how little of the world you’ve experienced you are likely wrong, especially in knowing how other people think and make decisions.

Academically smart people – at least those measured that way – have a better chance of being quickly ushered into jobs with lots of responsibility. With responsibility they’ll have to make decisions that affect other people. But since many of the smarties experienced a totally different career path than less intelligent people, they can have a hard time relating to how others think – what they’ve experienced, how they see the world, how they solve problems, what kind of issues they face, what they’re motivated by, etc. The clearest example of this is the brilliant business professor whose brain overlaps maybe a millimeter or two with the guy successfully running a local dry cleaning business. Many CEOs, managers, politicians, and regulators have the same flaw.

A subtle form of smarts is recognizing that the intelligence that gave you the power to make decisions affecting other people does not mean you understand or relate to those other people. In fact, you very likely don’t. So you go out of your way to listen and empathize with others who have had different experiences than you, despite having the authority to make decisions for them granted to you by your GPA.

Convincing yourself and others to forgo instant gratification, often through strategic distraction.

Everyone knows the famous marshmallow test, where kids who could delay eating one marshmallow in exchange for two later on ended up better off in life. But the most important part of the test is often overlooked. The kids exercising patience often didn’t do it through sheer will. Most kids will take the first marshmallow if they sit there and stare at it. The patient ones delayed gratification by distracting themselves. They hid under a desk. Or sang a song. Or played with their shoes. Walter Mischel, the psychologist behind the famous test, later wrote:

The single most important correlate of delay time with youngsters was attention deployment, where the children focused their attention during the delay period: Those who attended to the rewards, thus activating the hot system more, tended to delay for a shorter time than those who focused their attention elsewhere, thus activating the cool system by distracting themselves from the hot spots.

Delayed gratification isn’t about surrounding yourself with temptations and hoping to say no to them. No one is good at that. The smart way to handle long-term thinking is enjoying what you’re doing day to day enough that the terminal rewards don’t constantly cross your mind.

消费者AI革命不会是技术性的，它将是情感驱动的。 || The Consumer AI Revolution Won’t Be Technical. It’ll Be Emotional.

2025-05-29T16:02:00+00:00

在科技领域，显而易见的革命往往最后才出现。互联网在感觉变得个人化之前已经存在了几十年。它最初诞生于实验室，逐渐进入办公室，直到后来才进入我们的家庭。智能手机不仅仅是通信方式的新形式——它标志着计算从企业IT部门转移到我们口袋里的那一刻。 AI的发展速度比以往任何技术浪潮都要快。不到五年的时间里，我们从令人惊叹的GPT-3演示进入了这样一个现实：数以百万计的人每天都在与AI互动（有时甚至没有意识到）。迄今为止，大部分关注都集中在技术层面：模型性能、标记成本、企业应用场景。但真正具有变革性的变化可能发生在界面、品牌和情感共鸣的层面。那些真正能被用户接受的工具不仅仅是准确度最高的。它们将是直觉最自然、文化适应性最强、仿佛天生就属于你的生活而无需刻意学习的工具。真正的优势就在这里，而消费者AI即将变得非常有趣。因为现在正在发生一些重大变化。标记成本正在下降（自2020年以来，OpenAI将价格削减了90%以上），这让开发者以更低的成本和更高的可行性构建和推出消费者AI应用成为可能。微调模型变得更容易。技术壁垒（如果曾经存在过的话）正在消散。随着基础设施变得更便宜且更易获取，AI的下一步发展正逐渐清晰：消费者。 “曾经感觉现代的事物，现在却显得不可动摇。这些基础应用已经固化，而AI正揭示它们有多么脆弱。” 因为消费者并不关心你的模型规模。他们关心的是，它是否能帮助他们以更少的摩擦度过每一天。想想我们每天使用的工具：Gmail、iCalendar、WhatsApp。它们最初是为网络设计的，后来被优化为移动应用，但基本上被遗弃了。曾经感觉现代的事物，现在却显得不可动摇。这些基础应用已经固化，而AI正揭示它们有多么脆弱。它们并未被设计成在你无需查看屏幕、无需指令的情况下倾听、适应并行动。消费者AI并不只是关于聊天机器人。至少不是我们所熟知的那种。它关乎摆脱多年来我们点击的那些陈旧按钮和下拉菜单的网络。真正的机遇在于界面：不仅响应命令，还能预判语境的工具。这不仅仅是更好的用户体验，而是全新类型的交互方式。这可能意味着一个购房助手，它不仅展示房源，还能理解你的日常通勤、遛狗习惯以及你早晨喜欢的灯光。一个能与你伴侣的日程安排和现金流同步的个人财务系统，这样你们就可以一起规划，而无需每天谈论金钱。或者是一个钢琴教练，它在你弹奏时倾听，并实时调整你的练习计划，因为你终于有了一个拥有无限耐心的老师。聊天机器人或许开启了对话式AI的时代，但真正的革命在于其后的部分：那些更像队友而非软件的、环境化、嵌入式、隐形的工具。 “未来的赢家看起来不会像OpenAI，而更像是耐克或皮克斯：情感流利、文化嵌入、行为塑造的机器，却藏在显眼之处。” 一些这样的产品已经开始出现。或者说，已经初见端倪。Rewind.ai为用户提供了对其数字生活的可搜索记忆。Rabbit的R1承诺通过将自然语言转化为行动，彻底消除“应用层”。Humane的Ai Pin虽然存在缺陷，但至少提出了正确的问题：当不需要查看屏幕时，计算会是什么样子？这些产品都尚未完全成功。大多数都收到了差评。有些甚至让人觉得是笑话。但它们正在尝试触及一些重要的东西。它们试图想象一个界面不再受限于屏幕和键盘的未来。这很重要。尽管它们显然还不是最终形态，但它们指明了一个我们尚未完全探索的前沿。这些是新类型产品的早期失误；不是雄心的失败，而是某种新事物在努力诞生的迹象。历史提醒我们，形态的改变很少是渐进的。个人电脑并未直接导致智能手机的出现——它需要对界面、分发方式和消费者行为进行彻底的重新构想。我们正等待着另一场类似的飞跃。苹果的Vision Pro、Meta的雷朋智能眼镜，以及由AI驱动的可穿戴设备如Oura Ring，都是未来可能的早期迹象。然而，通往大众普及的道路并非由代码铺就：而是由信任、易用性和相关性铺就。这正是许多投资者犹豫的原因。企业AI易于评估：有销售管道、效率指标和投资回报率。而消费者AI则更为复杂。它依赖于品味、文化时机和品牌。这很难用表格来计算。但正是这种复杂性让它如此引人注目。 “未来五年内最好的消费者AI产品不会让你惊叹于它的智能。它会赢得你的信任。而且从不寻求你的关注。” 毕竟，品牌本身就是信任的代名词。而在AI代理代表你行动的世界里，信任是最宝贵的资产。五年内，最受喜爱的AI产品将没有应用、屏幕或用户界面，其品牌将比你的银行更值得信赖。消费者AI不是一次技术突破，而是一次文化变革。赢家看起来不会像OpenAI，而更像是耐克或皮克斯：情感流利、文化嵌入、行为塑造的机器，却藏在显眼之处。这就是其防御力所在——不在于专有模型，而在于情感共鸣和行为锁定。就像苹果，就像Spotify，就像所有那些伪装成基础设施的消费者产品。那么，这一切将走向何方？在未来18到24个月内，大多数消费者AI实验都将失败。硬件无法正常运作，助手会出错，评价会非常严厉。这很正常。界面革命总是从摩擦开始，而不是从精致的打磨开始。重要的是，少数团队会成功。他们将把文化直觉与技术杠杆结合起来。他们将设计产品，不是为了功能，而是为了情感。当他们推出时，你将无法确定它们是应用、品牌还是行为——唯一确定的是，它们让生活变得更轻松、更人性化、更属于你。未来五年内最好的消费者AI产品不会让你惊叹于它的智能。它会赢得你的信任。而且从不寻求你的关注。
---------------

In technology, the obvious revolutions often come last.

The internet was around for decades before it felt personal. It started in labs, crept into offices, and only later landed in our homes. The smartphone wasn’t just a new form of communication – it was the moment computing shifted from corporate IT departments to our front pockets.

AI is accelerating faster than any previous wave of technology. In less than five years, we’ve gone from jaw-dropping demos of GPT-3 to a reality where millions of people interact with AI every day (sometimes without realizing it). Most of the attention so far has focused on the technical layer: model performance, token pricing, enterprise use cases. But the most transformative changes are likely to happen at the level of interface, brand, and emotional resonance.

The tools that stick won’t just be the most accurate. They’ll be the most intuitive, the most culturally fluent, the ones that feel like they belong in your life without demanding to be learned. That’s where the real leverage lies, and where consumer AI is about to get very interesting.

Because something big is happening now. Token costs are falling (OpenAI has slashed prices by more than 90% since 2020) making it cheaper and more feasible for developers to build and ship consumer AI applications. Fine-tuning models is becoming easier. The technical moat (if there ever was one) is evaporating. And as infrastructure becomes cheaper and more accessible, AI’s next act is coming into focus: the consumer.

“What once felt modern now feels immovable. These bedrock apps ossified, and AI is revealing just how brittle they’ve become.”

Because consumers don’t care about your model size. They care whether it helps them get through the day with a little less friction.

Think about the tools we use every day: Gmail. iCalendar. Whatsapp. They were built for the web, optimized for mobile, and essentially left to rot. What once felt modern now feels immovable. These bedrock apps ossified, and AI is revealing just how brittle they’ve become. They weren’t designed for a world where your technology listens, adapts, and acts without instruction.

Consumer AI isn’t about chatbots. Not the way we’ve come to know them, anyway. It’s about escaping the tired web of buttons and dropdowns we’ve been clicking through for years. The real opportunity is interface: tools that don’t just respond to commands but anticipate context. It’s not just about better UX. It’s about a new class of interaction altogether.

This could mean a home-buying concierge that doesn’t just show you listings, but understands your daily commute, dog-walking routine, and what kind of light you like in the mornings. A personal finance system that syncs with your partner’s calendar and cash flow, so you plan together without talking about money every day. Or a piano coach that listens as you play and adjusts your practice routine in real time, because you finally have a teacher with infinite patience.

Chatbots might have kicked off the era of conversational AI, but the revolution is in what comes after: ambient, embedded, invisible tools that behave more like teammates than software.

“The winners will look less like OpenAI and more like Nike or Pixar: emotionally fluent, culturally embedded, behavior-shaping machines hiding in plain sight.”

Some of this is already happening. Well, sort of. Rewind.ai is giving users searchable memory across their digital lives. Rabbit’s R1 promises to remove the “app layer” entirely by turning natural language into actions. Humane’s Ai Pin, while flawed, is at least asking the right question: what does computing look like when you don’t have to look at a screen?

None of these products have nailed it. Most were met with bad reviews. Some feel like punchlines. But they’re reaching for something important. They’re trying to imagine a future where interface is no longer constrained by screens and keyboards. That matters. And while they’re clearly not the final form, they point toward a frontier we haven’t yet fully explored. These are the early missteps of a new genre; not failures of ambition, but signs that something new is struggling to be born.

History reminds us that form factor changes are rarely incremental. The PC didn’t lead to the smartphone – it required a complete reimagining of interface, distribution, and consumer behavior. We are due for another leap like that. Apple’s Vision Pro, Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses, and AI-driven wearables like the Oura Ring are early hints of what might come next.

Still, the path to mass adoption isn’t paved in code: it’s paved in trust, usability, and relevance. This is where many investors hesitate. Enterprise AI is easy to underwrite: there’s a sales pipeline, an efficiency metric, an ROI. Consumer AI feels squishier. It relies on taste. On cultural timing. On brand. It’s harder to spreadsheet.

But that’s what makes it so compelling.

“The best consumer AI product of the next five years won’t wow you with its intelligence. It’ll earn your trust. And never ask for your attention.”

Brand, after all, is a proxy for trust. And trust is the most valuable commodity in a world where AI agents will act on your behalf. Within five years, the most beloved AI product won’t have an app, a screen, or a UI, and its brand will be more trusted than your bank. Consumer AI isn’t a technical breakthrough; it’s a cultural one. The winners will look less like OpenAI and more like Nike or Pixar: emotionally fluent, culturally embedded, behavior-shaping machines hiding in plain sight. That’s where the defensibility lies – not in proprietary models, but in emotional resonance and behavioral lock-in. Just like Apple. Just like Spotify. Just like every consumer product that became infrastructure in disguise.

So where does this go?

In the next 18–24 months, most consumer AI experiments will flop. The hardware won’t work. The assistants will misfire. The reviews will be brutal. That’s fine. That’s how interface revolutions always begin; not with polish, but with friction. What matters is that a few teams will get it right. They’ll combine cultural intuition with technical leverage. They’ll design not for features, but for feelings. And when they launch, it won’t be clear whether they’re apps or brands or behaviors – only that they make life easier, more human, more yours. The best consumer AI product of the next five years won’t wow you with its intelligence. It’ll earn your trust. And never ask for your attention.

接下来的并非产品，而是一种挑衅。 || What Comes Next Isn’t a Product. It’s a Provocation.

2025-05-21T15:51:00+00:00

今年是麻省理工学院媒体实验室成立40周年，我参与创建这个实验室，并不是为了整理已知的知识，而是为了创造一个容许未知存在的空间。它在“跨学科”成为装饰词之前就已经具备跨学科的特质。它为那些无法归属于传统院系的人而设计。事实上，许多创始教员本身就是最有生产力的“不协调者”：他们在各自领域都是局外人，堪称真正的“被拒者沙龙”。我们不是在解决问题，而是在不明确问题的情况下开发解决方案。正是在边缘地带，当好奇心可以自由漫游，而正统观念被礼貌地忽视时，突破才得以发生。媒体实验室的初衷，正如现在一样，是探索计算机对日常生活的意义。不是计算，而是生活。它从不只是关于技术，而是关于视角。正如我之前所说，最好的视野是周边视野。同样，包豪斯、黑山学院和贝尔实验室也是如此。这些不仅仅是教育机构，它们是催化剂，吸引着先驱者和异类，将原本可能从不合作的天才头脑汇聚一堂。它们将形式视为一种探究方式，质疑学科之间的边界，并有意地模糊这些边界。它们将品味视为方法论。它们通过创造空间——不仅是物理空间，更是文化上的许可——来实现无预期的实验。今天，我们正处在需要类似回应的时刻。人工智能不仅仅是让我们以更快的速度完成已知任务。它是一次媒介变革，一种新的思维、互动和美学的基质。但与其这样看待它，我们却把它像洒糖浆一样浇在传统系统上，这种做法从根本上是不匹配的。几个助手，几处自动补全功能。更多生产力，更少想象力。我们需要的不是更多应用程序。我们需要的是新的模式，挑战假设而非强化假设。能够真正促进创新的环境结合了学科之间的摩擦，将计算视为原始材料，并允许设计引领而非滞后。纽约正在进行的一项努力就是AIR，即人工智能驻留计划（AI Residency），这是一种新的以设计为导向的人工智能产品加速器。创始人被鼓励不要追逐指标，而是提出更好的问题：使用这个产品感觉如何？它假设了怎样的世界？它创造了怎样的关系？当今关于人工智能的大部分讨论都围绕着规模展开：有多少用户？推理速度有多快？投资回报率有多高？这些问题固然重要，但并非真正有趣的问题。真正有趣的问题更为根本：我们将需要哪些新的素养？哪些新的误用会随之出现？这项技术能否帮助我们更好地理解自己？历史告诉我们，重要的想法很少来自中心，它们往往始于边缘，那里允许想法不完整，甚至错误。那里成功不是目标，学习才是。像AIR这样的努力之所以重要，是因为它们创造了突破通常发生条件。下一次重大突破往往始于某种奇怪的事物。它不会以完整的形式出现，也不会以清晰或共识的方式宣告到来。它是由一些小而好奇的群体塑造的，这些群体探索着他人忽视的路径。媒体实验室教会我，未来不是从计划开始，而是从实验开始。如果历史是任何指南，那么技术的未来将不会由既得利益者或内部人士决定，而是由那些拥有独特视角并拥有自由追随其想法的小群体所书写。我们应该支持这种追求。我们应该建造使它们成为可能的空间。因为接下来发生的事物并不是产品，而是一种挑衅。
---------------

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the MIT Media Lab, a place I helped create not to organize what was already known, but to make space for what wasn’t.

It was interdisciplinary before the word became decor. It was designed for people who didn’t fit into departments. In fact, many of its founding faculty were misfits in the most productive sense: outsiders in their own disciplines, a veritable Salon des Refusés. We weren’t solving problems. We were developing solutions without knowing the problems. That’s how breakthroughs happen, at the edges, where curiosity is free to wander and orthodoxy is politely ignored.

The Lab’s purpose then, as now, was to explore what computers might mean for everyday life. Not computing, but living. It was never only about technology. It was about perspective. As I’ve said before, the best vision is peripheral vision.

The same could be said of Bauhaus, Black Mountain College, and Bell Labs. These were not just institutions of instruction. They were catalysts that attracted visionaries and outsiders, bringing together brilliant minds who might otherwise never have collaborated. They treated form as a form of inquiry. They questioned the boundaries between disciplines and then blurred them deliberately. They approached taste as methodology. And they did it by creating space—not just physical space, but cultural permission—for experimentation without expectation.

Today, we find ourselves in a moment that requires a similar response.

AI is not simply a faster way to do what we’ve already done. It’s a medium shift, a new substrate for thought, interaction, and aesthetics. But instead of treating it that way, we’re drizzling it onto legacy systems in ways that feel fundamentally mismatched. A few assistants here, a couple auto-completes there. More productivity, less imagination.

What we need is not more apps. What we need are new models, ones that challenge assumptions rather than reinforce them.

The environments that foster true innovation combine friction between disciplines, treat computation as a raw material, and allow design to lead rather than lag. One such effort is unfolding in New York: AIR, short for AI Residency, a new kind of accelerator for design-led AI products. Founders are encouraged not to chase metrics, but to ask better questions. What does it feel like to use this? What kind of world does it assume? What kind of relationships does it create?

Too much of today’s AI conversation revolves around scale: How many users? How fast is the inference? How good is the ROI? These are fine questions, but they are not the interesting ones.

The interesting questions are more fundamental: What new literacies will we need? What new misuses will emerge? Can this technology help us understand ourselves better?

History tells us that significant ideas rarely come from the center. They begin at the margins, where ideas are allowed to be incomplete, even incorrect. Places where success is not the goal, but learning is.

Efforts like AIR matter because they create the conditions where breakthroughs tend to happen. The next big thing often starts as something strange. It does not arrive fully formed, or announce itself with clarity or consensus. It is shaped by small, curious groups, exploring the paths others have overlooked.

The Media Lab taught me that the future doesn’t start with a plan; it starts with an experiment. If history is any guide, the future of technology won’t be determined by incumbents or insiders. It will be authored by small groups with unusual perspectives and the freedom to follow them.

We should support that pursuit. We should build the spaces that make them possible.

Because what comes next is not a product. It is a provocation.

几个问题 || A Few Questions

2025-05-08T20:16:00+00:00

我的哪些最坚定的信念是基于二手信息而非亲身经历形成的？如果我不再与任何人比较，我会如何定义一个好人生？我批评的是谁的观点，如果我处在他们的位置，我其实会同意？我嫉妒的那些人，实际上是否比我更不快乐？回顾过去，我是否擅长预判自己在实际风险发生时的感受和反应？我对更多金钱的渴望是否源于一个错误的信念，即它能解决与金钱无关的个人问题？我的原则中有多少是文化潮流？我把谁的沉默误解为同意？如果只有我的直系亲属能看到我的生活方式，我会过怎样的生活？哪些事件几乎发生，如果它们发生了，会从根本上改变我的生活？我声称相信但明知错误的观点是什么？我这样说是因为不想被雇主或行业批评。我所做的有多少是出于内部基准（让我快乐）还是外部基准（我认为这会改变他人对我的看法）？我是在独立思考，还是在迎合我想要加入的群体的主流观点？我是在争取谁的认可？如果我的原则不再给我带来赞誉和认可，我会放弃哪些？如果我能看到自己讲话的样子，最让我感到尴尬的是什么？我害怕提出什么问题，因为我怀疑自己已经知道答案？我所取得的成就中，有多少是外部因素造成的？我如何判断自己是在耐心（一种能力）还是固执（一种缺陷）？我渴望效仿的那些疯狂天才，实际上是否只是疯子？我持有的哪些坚定信念最有可能改变？我现在正在创造哪个未来的记忆，我是否会为此感到自豪？我是否沉迷于廉价多巴胺？如果明天我就要去世，我会最后悔什么？
---------------

Which of my strongest beliefs are formed on second-hand information vs. first-hand experience?

If I could not compare myself to anyone else, how would I define a good life?

Whose views do I criticize that I would actually agree with if I lived in their shoes?

Who do I envy that is actually less happy than I am?

Looking back, am I any good at anticipating how I would feel and react to risks that actually occurred?

Is my desire for more money based on the false belief that it will solve personal problems that have nothing to do with money?

How many of my principles are cultural fads?

Whose silence do I mistake for agreement?

What kind of lifestyle would I live if no one other than my immediate family could see it?

What events nearly happened that would have fundamentally changed my life, for better or worse, had they occurred?

What views do I claim to believe in that I know are wrong but I say them because I don’t want to be criticized by my employer or industry?

How much of what I do is internal benchmark (makes me happy) vs. external benchmark (I think it changes what other people think of me)?

Am I thinking independently or going along with the tribal views of a group I want to be associated with?

Whose approval am I auditioning for?

Which of my principles would I abandon if they stopped earning me praise and recognition?

If I could see myself talk, what would I cringe at the most?

What question am I afraid to ask because I suspect I know the answer?

How much have things outside of my control contributed to things I take credit for?

How do I know if I’m being patient (a skill) or stubborn (a flaw)?

What crazy genius that I aspire to emulate is actually just crazy?

What strong belief do I hold that’s most likely to change?

Which future memory am I creating right now, and will I be proud to own it?

Am I addicted to cheap dopamine?

If I were on my deathbed tomorrow, what would I regret most?

芝麻街前10%的收益 || Top-Decile Returns for Sesame Street

2025-05-06T13:00:00+00:00

我们于2016年推出了Collab+Sesame，专注于种子轮和早期轮次的基金，其简单而有力的理论是：随着科技创业者逐渐成熟，他们将创造出一波新产品和服务，从而改变儿童的生活空间。芝麻街基金会采取了勇敢的一步。他们将他们的品牌，世界上最好的品牌之一，以及数十年的研究成果、全球受众和以善良与学习为基础的声誉交给我们，并说：“展示你们能做什么。”我们被这份信任所感动，从那以后，我们每天都牢记着这份责任。快进到今天，截至2025年3月31日，以下是相关数据：净TVPI：5.3倍净DPI：2.6倍净IRR：38.1% 这些指标在该基金成立批次（PitchBook 2024年第三季度基准数据，包含初步的第四季度数据）的全球风险投资基金中，净DPI、净TVPI和净IRR均位列前十分之一。但这些回报不仅仅是数字。在这一过程中，我们有幸支持了一些杰出的团队，包括Lovevery、Outschool、Step、OK Play（被Dapper Labs收购）、Yup（被Prenda收购）、Luminopia以及其他公司。他们的努力和远见对于塑造这一成功至关重要。除了财务回报，这些数字还代表了为全球数百万儿童开展新研究和倡议的基础。我们每返还给芝麻街基金会的一美元，都会回馈到最初激励我们的使命中：帮助儿童学习、共情和探索。 Collab+Sesame不是一个关于慈善的故事，也不是一个传统风险投资基金。它证明了当严谨的投资纪律与真正的使命相结合时，可以实现市场领先的回报和实质性的改变。阅读我们的2016年启动帖子，并了解《连线》、TechCrunch和《纽约客》是如何报道这一旅程的开端。感谢Tim Brady和Geoff Ralston创建了ImagineK12，这为Collab+Sesame提供了早期的灵感。不应假设本文中描述的任何影响力倡议、标准或指标将适用于Collab基金投资的每项资产，也不应假设它们已应用于之前的每一笔投资。投资的影响力只是Collab基金在做出投资决策时考虑的众多因素之一，在某些情况下，其他因素可能会占据主导地位。
---------------

We launched Collab+Sesame in 2016 as a pre-seed and seed-focused fund with a simple but powerful thesis: as tech entrepreneurs come of age, they would create a new wave of products and services to transform the kids’ space.

Sesame Street’s Endowment took a courageous step. It entrusted us with its brand, one of the best brands in the world, along with decades of research, a global audience, and a reputation built on kindness and learning, and said, “Show us what you can do.” We were humbled by that vote of confidence, and every day since, we’ve been mindful of the responsibility.

Fast-forward to present day, and here are the numbers through March 31, 2025:

Net TVPI: 5.3x

Net DPI: 2.6x

Net IRR: 38.1%

These metrics rank in the top decile for Net DPI, Net TVPI, and Net IRR among all global venture capital funds in that vintage (PitchBook’s Q3 2024 benchmarks, with preliminary Q4 data).

But these returns are about more than just numbers. Along the way, we’ve been fortunate to back some incredible teams, including Lovevery, Outschool, Step, OK Play (acquired by Dapper Labs), Yup (acquired by Prenda), Luminopia, and others. Their hard work and vision have been instrumental in shaping this success.

Beyond financial returns, these numbers represent the foundation for new research and initiatives that reach millions of children worldwide. Every dollar we’ve returned to Sesame Street’s Endowment flows back into the mission that first inspired us: helping kids learn, empathize, and explore.

Collab+Sesame isn’t a story about charity, nor a conventional venture fund. It’s proof that when you blend rigorous investment discipline with a genuine mission, you can deliver market-leading returns and meaningful change.

Read our 2016 launch post and explore how Wired, TechCrunch, and The New Yorker covered the start of this journey.

Hat tip to Tim Brady and Geoff Ralston for creating ImagineK12, which was an early inspiration for Collab+Sesame.

It should not be assumed that any impact initiatives, standards or metrics described herein will apply to each asset in which any Collab fund invests or that they have applied each of the prior investments. Impact of an investment is only one of the many considerations that the Collab funds take into account when making investment decisions, and other considerations can be expected in certain circumstances to outweigh those considerations.

几个短篇故事 || A Few Short Stories

2025-04-24T07:09:00+00:00

1955年，有三万七千名美国人死于车祸，这一数字是按行驶里程调整后的当今死亡率的六倍。福特那年开始在所有车型中提供安全带。这项升级费用为27美元，相当于今天的190美元。研究表明，安全带能减少近70%的交通事故死亡人数。但只有2%的顾客选择了这项升级。98%的买家更愿意继续受惯性支配。情况最终发生了变化，但需要数十年时间。20世纪80年代初，安全带的使用率仍低于15%。直到2000年代初，使用率才超过80%——距离福特首次在所有车型中提供安全带已近半个世纪。我们很容易低估社会规范如何阻碍变革，即使这种变革是显而易见的改进。世界上最强劲的力量之一，就是人们倾向于保持做他们一直以来做的事，因为人们不喜欢被告诉他们做错了。变革终究会到来，但比你想象的要缓慢得多。敦刻尔克是一场奇迹。超过33万盟军士兵在1940年被纳粹攻击所困，成功从法国海滩撤离到英国，由数百艘小型民用船只运送。任务完成后，伦敦爆发了庆祝活动。很少有人比温斯顿·丘吉尔更感到如释重负，因为他担心自己的军队即将遭到毁灭。但爱德蒙·伊罗恩赛德将军，英国本土防卫部队的指挥官，指出如果盟军能迅速将33万士兵从法国运送到英国并避开空袭，那么德国人很可能也能做到。丘吉尔一直抱有希望，认为德国无法用入侵部队横渡英吉利海峡；这种大胆的行动似乎不可能。但后来他的军队证明了这完全有可能。敦刻尔克既是成功，也预示了未来的危险。你的竞争对手很可能能够像你一样创新和执行。因此，每次你发现一项自己引以为豪的新才能时，要以接受其他人同样渴望胜利的可能来平衡你的兴奋。说唱歌手大肖恩（Notorious BIG）曾随意提到他从四年级就开始卖海洛因。他解释道： “老师们总是说，‘把你拥有的天赋考虑一下，想想未来你能用它做什么。’” 而我则说，“我喜欢画画。”那我又能做什么呢？我会成为艺术品经销商吗？我不打算成为那种人。我想到或许可以做大型广告牌，比如商业艺术。然后我接触到了海洛因。哈哈，现在我想到商业艺术？哈哈。我在这里待20分钟就能赚到实实在在的钱，伙计。激励驱动一切，而大多数人低估了当激励正确时，自己愿意付出多少。当巴拉克·奥巴马在2005年谈及竞选总统时，他的朋友乔治·海伍德——一位经验丰富的投资者——曾警告他：房地产市场即将崩溃，并将拖累整个经济。乔治向奥巴马解释了抵押贷款支持证券的运作方式，它们被错误地评级，累积的风险很大，其崩溃是不可避免的。这不只是空谈：乔治当时正在做空房贷市场。房价持续上涨了两年。到2007年危机初现时，奥巴马联系了乔治。难道他的赌注现在开始见效了？奥巴马在他的回忆录中写道：乔治告诉我，他因为承受了巨大损失，被迫放弃了做空头寸。 “我就是没有足够的现金继续这个赌注，”他冷静地说道，补充道，“显然，我低估了人们愿意维持这种假象的程度。” 非理性的趋势很少遵循理性的时间表。不可持续的事物往往比你想象的要持久得多。 1348年黑死病传入英格兰时，苏格兰北部的人们却嘲笑他们的好运。在英格兰因疾病而陷入瘫痪之际，现在正是苏格兰对邻国发动攻击的绝佳时机。苏格兰集结了数以千计的士兵准备战斗。当然，这在疫情期间是最糟糕的举动。历史学家芭芭拉·图奇曼在她的著作《遥远的镜子》中写道：“在他们行动之前，可怕的死亡降临到他们身上，一些人死于疾病，其余人则陷入恐慌。” 人们有一种强烈的倾向，认为风险只会发生在别人身上。其他人倒霉，其他人做出愚蠢的决定，其他人被贪婪和恐惧的诱惑所动摇。但你？我？不，永远不会是我们。这种错误的自信使得最终的现实更加令人震惊。有些人比其他人更容易受到风险的影响，但没有人能免于被现实所折服。丹·古德曼博士曾为一位因白内障自幼失明的中年女性做过手术。白内障被移除后，这位女性恢复了接近完美的视力。这是一次奇迹般的成功。几周后，这位患者回来复查。《突破》一书中写道：她的反应让古德曼感到惊讶。她作为一个盲人，一直感到快乐和满足。现在视力恢复了，她却变得焦虑和抑郁。她告诉古德曼，她成年后一直靠福利生活，从未工作过，也从未结婚或离开过家——过着一种她早已习惯的简陋生活。然而，政府官员却告诉她，她不再符合残疾条件，他们期望她能找到一份工作。社会希望她正常生活。她告诉古德曼，这让她难以承受。你梦想的每一个目标都有一个容易被忽视的负面影响。历史学家约翰·米奇曼写道：当我们谴责过去因奴隶制、印第安人迁移或剥夺女性在国家生活中的完整角色时，我们应该停下来思考：我们如今正在延续哪些不公，这些不公终将被后人以最严厉的审判看待？这适用于许多事物。香烟的现代版本是什么？几代前医生还推荐人们吸烟。200年前我们并不知道恐龙的存在，这让人不禁思考，还有哪些事物我们今天忽视了？哪家公司是现代的安然（Enron），显然是一场欺诈？大多数人——不是少数疯狂的人，而是我们大多数人——认为什么事物在100年后会看起来既可笑又令人羞愧？很多历史只是在观察人们如何错误、如何盲目。错误得可怕，盲目得令人难堪。数以百万计的人同时如此。当你意识到今天也会被后人视为历史时……哦，天哪。这令人不快，但也令人着迷。阿波罗11号是人类历史上首次访问另一个天体。你或许会认为这将是一次令人难以置信的经历——实际上，这是人类做过最酷的事情。但当宇宙飞船悬停在月球上时，迈克尔·柯林斯转向尼尔·阿姆斯特朗和巴兹·奥尔德林说： “你适应得真快。对我来说，看着月球从眼前掠过并不觉得奇怪，你知道吗？” 三月后，当阿尔·比恩在阿波罗12号任务中登上月球时，他转向宇航员皮特·康拉德说：“这有点像那首歌：‘这就是全部了吗？’”康拉德感到如释重负，因为他私下也这么认为，描述他的月球行走是壮观的，但并不具有历史意义。大多数心理上的正面体验来自于对未来的期待——实际经历往往平淡无奇，而你的大脑会迅速转向期待下一个事件。这就是多巴胺的作用。如果登月让宇航员感到平淡，那么我们自己的世俗目标和期望又如何呢？约翰·纳什是历史上最聪明的数学家之一，他赢得了诺贝尔奖。他同时也患有精神分裂症，大部分时间都坚信外星人正在向他发送加密信息。在《美丽心灵》一书中，西尔维娅·纳萨记录了纳什与哈佛大学教授乔治·麦克基的一次对话： “作为一个数学家，一个致力于理性与逻辑证明的人，你怎么会相信外星人正在向你发送信息？你怎么会相信你正被来自外太空的外星人招募来拯救世界？”麦克基问道。 “因为，”纳什用他柔和、理性的南方口音慢慢说道，“我关于超自然生物的想法，和我关于数学的想法是通过同样的方式产生的。所以我认真对待它们。” 这是一个很好的例子，说明我关于非常有才华的人的理论：当那些以独特方式思考世界的人也以你不喜欢的方式思考世界时，不要感到惊讶。独特的思维必须被整体接受。更多：
---------------

Thirty-seven thousand Americans died in car accidents in 1955, six times today’s rate adjusted for miles driven.

Ford began offering seat belts in every model that year. It was a $27 upgrade, equivalent to about $190 today. Research showed they reduced traffic fatalities by nearly 70%.

But only 2% of customers opted for the upgrade. Ninety-eight percent of buyers preferred to remain at the mercy of inertia.

Things eventually changed, but it took decades. Seatbelt usage was still under 15% in the early 1980s. It didn’t exceed 80% until the early 2000s – almost half a century after Ford offered them in all cars.

It’s easy to underestimate how social norms stall change, even when the change is an obvious improvement. One of the strongest forces in the world is the urge to keep doing things as you’ve always done them, because people don’t like to be told they’ve been doing things wrong. Change eventually comes, but agonizingly slower than you might assume.

Dunkirk was a miracle. More than 330,000 Allied soldiers, pinned down by Nazi attacks, were successfully evacuated from the beaches of France back to England, ferried by hundreds of small civilian boats.

London broke out in celebration when the mission was completed. Few were more relieved than Winston Churchill, who feared the imminent destruction of his army.

But Edmund Ironside, commander of British Home Forces, pointed out that if the Allies could quickly ferry a third of a million troops from France to England while avoiding aerial attack, the Germans probably could, too. Churchill had been holding onto hope that Germany couldn’t cross the Channel with an invasion force; such a daring mission seemed impossible. But then his own army proved it was quite possible. Dunkirk was both a success and a foreboding.

Your competitors can probably innovate and execute as well as you can. So every time you uncover a new talent you’re proud of, temper your thrill with the acceptance that other people who want to win as badly as you probably aren’t far behind.

Notorious BIG once casually mentioned that he began selling crack in fourth grade. He explained:

They [teachers] was always like, “Take the talent that you have and think of something that you can do in the future with it.”

And I was like, “Well, I like to draw.” So what could I do with drawing? What am I gonna be, an art dealer? I’m not gonna be that type. I was thinking maybe I can do big billboards and shit. Like commercial art.

And then after that I got introduced to crack. Haha, now I’m thinking, commercial art?! Haha. I’m out here for 20 minutes and I can make some real, real money, man.

Incentives drive everything, and most of us underestimate what we’d be willing to do if the incentives were right.

When Barack Obama discussed running for president in 2005, his friend George Haywood – an accomplished investor – gave him a warning: the housing market was about to collapse, and would take the economy down with it.

George told Obama how mortgage-backed securities worked, how they were being rated all wrong, how much risk was piling up, and how inevitable its collapse was. And it wasn’t just talk: George was short the mortgage market.

Home prices kept rising for two years. By 2007, when cracks began showing, Obama checked in with George. Surely his bet was now paying off?

Obama wrote in his memoir:

George told me that he had been forced to abandon his short position after taking heavy losses.

“I just don’t have enough cash to stay with the bet,” he said calmly enough, adding, “Apparently I’ve underestimated how willing people are to maintain a charade.”

Irrational trends rarely follow rational timelines. Unsustainable things can last longer than you think.

When the Black Death plague entered England in 1348, the Scots up north laughed at their good fortune. With the English crippled by disease, now was a perfect time for Scotland to stage an attack on its neighbor.

The Scots huddled together thousands of troops in preparation for battle. Which, of course, is the worst possible move during a pandemic.

“Before they could move, the savage mortality fell upon them too, scattering some in death and the rest in panic,” historian Barbara Tuchman writes in her book A Distant Mirror.

There’s a powerful urge to think risk is something that happens to other people. Other people get unlucky, other people make dumb decisions, other people get swayed by the seduction of greed and fear. But you? Me? No, never us. False confidence makes the eventual reality all the more shocking.

Some are more susceptible to risk than others, but no one is exempt from being humbled.

Dr. Dan Goodman once performed surgery on a middle-aged woman whose cataract had left her blind since childhood. The cataract was removed, leaving the woman with near-perfect vision. A miraculous success.

The patient returned for a checkup a few weeks later. The book Crashing Through writes:

Her reaction startled Goodman. She had been happy and content as a blind person. Now sighted, she became anxious and depressed. She told him that she had spent her adult life on welfare and had never worked, married, or ventured far from home – a small existence to which she had become comfortably accustomed. Now, however, government officials told her that she no longer qualified for disability, and they expected her to get a job. Society wanted her to function normally. It was, she told Goldman, too much to handle.

Every goal you dream about has a downside that’s easy to overlook.

Historian John Meecham writes:

When we condemn [the past] for slavery, or for Native American removal, or for denying women their full role in the life of the nation, we ought to pause and think: What injustices are we perpetuating even now that will one day face the harshest of verdicts by those who come after us?

This applies to so many things.

What is the modern version of cigarettes, which were doctor-recommended just a few generations ago? We didn’t know dinosaurs existed 200 years ago, which makes you wonder what else is out there that we’re oblivious to today. What company is the modern Enron, so obviously a fraud? What do most people – not a few wackos, but most of us – believe that will look something between hilarious and disgraceful 100 years from now?

A lot of history is just gawking at how wrong, how blind, people can be. Disastrously wrong, embarrassingly blind. Millions of people, all at the same time. When you then realize that today will be considered history in a few generations … oh dear. It’s unpleasant. But also fascinating.

Apollo 11 was the first time in history humans visited another celestial body.

You’d think that would be an overwhelming experience – literally the coolest thing any human had ever done. But as the spacecraft hovered over the moon, Michael Collins turned to Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin and said:

It’s amazing how quickly you adapt. It doesn’t seem weird at all to me to look out there and see the moon going by, you know?

Three months later, after Al Bean walked on the moon during Apollo 12, he turned to astronaut Pete Conrad and said “It’s kind of like the song: Is that all there is?” Conrad was relieved, because he secretly felt the same, describing his moonwalk as spectacular but not momentous.

Most mental upside comes from the thrill of anticipation – actual experiences tend to fall flat, and your mind quickly moves on to anticipating the next event. That’s how dopamine works.

If walking on the moon left astronauts underwhelmed, what does it say about our own earthly goals and expectations?

John Nash is one of the smartest mathematicians to ever live, winning the Nobel Prize. He was also schizophrenic, and spent most of his life convinced that aliens were sending him coded messages.

In her book A Beautiful Mind, Silvia Nasar recounts a conversation between Nash and Harvard professor George Mackey:

“How could you, a mathematician, a man devoted to reason and logical proof, how could you believe that extraterrestrials are sending you messages? How could you believe that you are being recruited by aliens from outer space to save the world?” Mackey asked.

“Because,” Nash said slowly in his soft, reasonable southern drawl, “the ideas I had about supernatural beings came to me the same way that my mathematical ideas did. So I took them seriously.”

This is a good example of a theory I have about very talented people: No one should be shocked when people who think about the world in unique ways you like also think about the world in unique ways you don’t like. Unique minds have to be accepted as a full package.