LC

Can someone paraphrase what the thought experiment we are talking about?

Context and an anecdotal story: Mother's side (Italian) went thru Canada (7 year rest stop) to NYC. Father's side (also Italian) went straight to NYC. I wound up as a dual citizen and lived in Montreal for ~7 years (college and beyond). NYC, USA in general from what I've seen, is definitely more entrepreneurial. There is something about "making it for myself" in the USA. In Canada it was more "let's all enjoy this lovely country we have". Here's the anecdote about entrepreneurship: About four years ago I was browsing reddit and came across this subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/EntrepreneurRideAlong/ Here is the (dated) description: "This sub-reddit was created by u/LocalCaseStudy in early 2012 to show people how he launched his cleaning company, MaidsInBlack.com. Less than two years later, his company is now doing over $1 Million dollars per year and at least FIVE more companies that were founded from this subreddit are on pace to hit that in 2015 as well. You've stumbled across what is probably the most transparent case study you'll ever see for a local business." It followed the story of a dude who built a new app/website to book cleaning ladies (and gentlemen), and then started hiring out. Pretty much the story of how a guy built a small business from scratch, except he narrated the entire process online for people to watch. Everything from hiring, quality control, scheduling, insurance, payroll, website building, online advertising, customer service, etc. etc. It TOOK OFF. Everyone reading it thought, "well that doesn't seem TOO hard, I can probably do it too". And they did. At first it was pure clones, then it expanded to other home-services (gardening, etc.). Most were relatively successful, moreso depending on the hustle of the owner/operator. Then came the consolidation, the selling of ancillary services (automated advertising, website/app-in-a-box, automated customer service). Anyone in NYC and elsewhere may remember those "Handy" cleaning services ads on the subway. Well, this online forum is where it all started. Truly amazing if you think about it, the entire lifecycle of a business from start to finish, all documented. What really got me was how instantly, other people reading it immediately copied it, like within DAYS. The entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well in the US, I think, more than anywhere else I have ever been.

Scott, what is your lifetime IRR?

I think it's a bad idea. I would rather keep it to a few threads in the general forum, or wherever it is relevant to a particular company. A dedicated forum will just make more of a mess of things IMHO.

I used to request hard copies of 10Ks, read through them, and write in a sharpie on the cover the price I thought the company would transact for at arms-length, and then compare that price to market price. My price was usually lower, which I guess means I was wrong or overly conservative. But even moreso, I realized how much information in the 10K was unneccessary, and how much good information is left out. Like, the 10K will describe all the product lines. But you know how you really get an idea of what someone sells? Think like a buyer, check out their product page online and prices, and compare it to others. If you were a buyer, why would u buy from these guys? The 10K doesnt tell you that, but it is a much more informative exercise than reading 100 pgs of financial disclosure notes. Valeant will say, "Jublia has a revolutionary product, with pricing power above competitors and best-in-class sales and distribution systems, and revenue is therefore growing X%". Then you go online and say "well F$*K this, they're just charging $500 for toe cream" Also, you can eliminate all the financial notes reading if you know management isn't sketchy. Your judge of character is 100x more important than financial disclosure details. For example, if you think the guys at Valeant are honest, then no amount of reading the financial disclosures will convince you otherwise, you will just find a justification for what they are doing. So these days I don't read the 10K, but I take a look at overall financials and breakdowns and do other digging to make sure I know (or think I know) how the company functions. At the end of the day you can usually distill the company into less than 10 pieces of information that are most important.

I remember something about being unable to dive into equities due to insurance restrictions.

Have these guys spoken about the rationale behind allocating their $10B? I never heard of them prior to their anointing, did anyone follow them when they ran their own funds?

Ted Weschler is one odd dude, lol. But good to see them getting their faces out there.

In the hobbyist CPU market, people literally track which factory and production run the chip was assembled in to determine quality. I wonder why people don't do this with cars. There must be a german factory somewhere still pumping out quality BMWs. Same with toyota, honda, jeep, etc. And the same with some factory from the same automaker which is assembling garbage.

We're all unlucky that we were born now, and not in 4000 AD when the secrets to cellular degeneration have been uncovered and reversed, and everyone lives forever in total comfort and splendor across the entire universe.

SD, just write your damn memoirs already, you've always got the craziest stories ;D As to luck vs skill....who cares? All we can do is try our best regardless.

DIS

Relatively, I think you can skew the odds in your favor...the key is to remove the current price (or current multiple) from the equation entirely. The only way to do that is to think on such a long-term horizon (decades) that price becomes more irrelevant. Which reminds me of that Ben Graham documentary quote (spinoza): "You must look at things in the aspect of eternity" And, maybe even more importantly, by doing so you can generalize a lot more and make arguments based on industry and economic dynamics rather than daily minutia. Take the SP500 constituents. Imagine they are all trading at the market multiple. Can someone make relative claims on the value/"moat" of one company vs. another? Which company has a better chance of being around in 20 years vs. another? I think so, maybe not conclusively but you can make a strong argument of one vs. the other.

Hey folks, Does anyone remember a report/article/whitepaper from a few years ago that tracked blue-chips from the 50s/60s? Essentially it looked at PG as one example, and the P/E multiple it was trading at in say 1950. Then it took the next 50 years of earnings/dividends/splits etc. and discounted it back to that same point in 1950, in order to figure out what P/E it *should* have been trading at. Essentially making the point that quality companies are undervalued over the very long term. I thought I saved it on my computer or google drive but I can't find it :( Hopefully one of u guys remembers or has it saved. Cheers LC

For every Chinese city which has grown exponentially out of poverty based on manufacturing and engineering, there are 30 cities which have done the same based on critical reviews of Shakespeare and the next great American novel. Nobody is saying these degrees are worthless, but hard sciences have higher average salaries with less variance. Who would you lend 150K to?

The difference is that the PhDs/Engineers have an automatic call option because they can perform 2 useful skills for society. They can dig ditches and perform surgery. The literature majors/ditch diggers can only perform 1 useful skill towards society. So yes: society needs to allocate the resources efficiently (marry the PhD with the VC) to utilize that call option. If you live in an inefficient society, maybe you want to be a ditch digger and forgo the education expense. I live in the US.I graduated with a Bcomm from a Canadian Uni in finance in 2008. Not exactly a great time to be entering that workforce. I dug my ditches for years. But eventually the call option paid off. On a side note: everything I learned in Uni (aside from the social skills) could have been learned for free online. Of course, employers don't think that way. But that is another of society's inefficiencies. Imagine 2 students, both with the same knowledge. One came from a big uni and has ($150K) debt. The other debt free and learned everything online. As an owner, I can pay the debt-free student less money, and get the same output. The indebted student requires more salary because he has an additional expense.

Not sure I agree with either of these statements. An unemployed surgeon is more valuable than an unemployed ditch digger. Price does not equal value. Free education does not devalue the education. The price is just a transaction price. Look at the Chinese cities built upon free IP, they are in fact more valuable because they have removed the transaction cost. Most education and information is already out there to learn freely. Heck, I can download a med school's worth of textbooks and watch all the lectures online. That is not the reason we don't have a civilization filled with doctors, engineers, etc.

"The expected pressure inside the tube will be maintained around 0.015 psi (100 Pa, 0.75 torr)"

There's no hate...it's like if someone told u they were only going to buy 200+ PE stocks and get become a billionaire. I mean, I personally don't think it will work but it's your money...

1 rail tie being removed does not instantly destroy the entire network of railroad tracks and every train on it. 1 small hole in a boat does not instantly destroy the entire boat and every other boat in the ocean. I have come to agree with rukawa. This is a technological nightmare to build properly.

The more I read about it the more it reminds me of the monorail episode from the simpsons...

Well, regardless of the critics, it looks like they're going to try it anyways: https://hyperloop-one.com/image-gallery

"I'd argue that in general, the greater the variance in performances indicates the greater the irrationality in the market" Upon first glance maybe, but think of all the crashes in history. In the irrational period prior to the crashes, was there a wide or narrow performance variance? Seems like it narrows as we approach a crash, at least to me.

There is no number. No 42%, no approximately 30%, etc. Common thinking is mobile spend as a % of total digital spend is going to continue to trend upwards. Why can't we really pin a number on it? A big reason is what Slow Appreciation mentioned earlier. Imagine a client has TOLD ME to spend $10M/month, and hit X% ROI. I can probably spend $8M and hit that. That other $2M? It goes wherever I can find it. The worst thing is to leave money on the table. But of course sometimes I can't hit the number and disappoint everyone. Sometimes I can get a good deal on desktop, sometimes mobile, sometimes nowhere so I try and stretch it... So this question of % on platform A vs platform B...there is no rhyme or reason to it. Some people can tell a client, No i cannot spend that, it is a giant waste. Others would rather try and spend it, and then try even harder to justify it when their results suck. So the % looks more like a crapshoot. Look at it from the top down. Digital budgets should be between 5-20% of a total marketing plan, depending on the product/brand. Marketing spend has been consistently increasing over at least the last 5 years. There's only so many billboards, so that % is probably ticking upwards. Mobile as a % of that is growing fastest as it is newest part of the mix.

LTV - The first response was "that is the vaguest $(*&(# question ever" ;D I hope you find that funny...anyways, for a better answer: Depends on the vertical, the client, the business objective, the use case...probably in about that order. In other words, car makers are not buying mobile ads to convert. However the mobile spends are growing overall, and where you would suspect it would: branding.