Morgan Housel’s Notebook: Wealth Is What You Don’t See
A few quotes, ideas, and links I don't want to forget.
Ideas From Me
Wealth is what you don’t see. It’s the cars not purchased, the clothes not bought, the jewelry not worn. Wealth is hidden.
A cause of pessimism: Progress often happens too slowly to notice, but setbacks happen too quickly to ignore.
The cover of Forbes magazine does not celebrate poor investors who made good decisions but happened to experience the unfortunate side of risk. But it almost certainly celebrates rich investors who made OK or even reckless decisions and happened to get lucky. Both flipped the same coin that happened to land on a different side.
Ideas From Others
“The opposite of happiness isn’t unhappiness; it’s taking things for granted.”
—Mark Manson
“Be happy while you are living for you are a long time dead.”
—Scottish proverb
“The past is more unpredictable than the future.”
—Russian saying on nostalgia
What We Wrote
Doubling down on your winners by Sophie Bakalar
Yesterday, we announced our lead investment in Phaidra’s $50M+ Series B. This is the largest check I’ve ever been responsible for. Normally that would result in many sleepless nights; but I believe Phaidra is a winner and so it wasn’t a hard check to write.
The Rise of Slow Computing by Chris Dowd
This “slow computing” movement is building deep consumer loyalty by decoupling products from the algorithmic attention drain that has defined the last decade of consumer products. The paradox of the AI platform shift is that while it accelerates everything, its promise may be in helping us slow down and be more human.
Warren Buffett Was Always a Brand Guy by Craig Shapiro
Buffett, a decade before many modern brand marketers were born, knew that See’s scratched a very specific societal itch. You can’t model it in Excel, and you won’t find it in a discounted cash flow. But you can feel it in the way people talk about the brand, and the way they keep returning to it year after year.