The Best Advantage in Life
Warren Buffet talked about the ‘ovarian lottery’ i.e, the biggest influence on the average human’s life will be the conditions of our birth – where you were born and who you were born to. In this piece, Nick Maggiulli drives home the point, as usual with research and data to back it. His post was […]
How Google bought Android
How Google built and retains its monopoly in search and uses the cashflows from search to expand into adjacencies is a case study in technology and business acumen alike. One such story is its acquisition of Android, the open source mobile operating system when Google had little to show in terms of its interest in […]
“This Is Going to Change the World”
This is a crazy story reminding us of the madness around the late nineties’ tech bubble, a story that got even the likes of Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, John Doerr and Harvard sucked into. It is a fascinating read about how Segway, the two wheeled personal mobility device, was hyped out of proportion by its […]
Patrick O’Shaughnessy interviews Carl Kawaja of Capital
Patrick O’Shaughnessy is an American investor and the founder, Chairman, and CIO of O’Shaughnessy Asset Management, LLC (OSAM). In this podcast he interviews Carl Kawaja, a fund manager we don’t often hear about in India who someone who manages some of the Capital Group’s largest funds and is spoken about reverentially by his colleagues. We […]
Review of “No Rules Rule: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention” by Reed Hastings & Erin Meyer
Whilst most of the American tech giants have had their fair share of hubristic scandals (around predatory tactics vis a vis rivals and/or customers, low pay for employees, sexual harassment, bullying of employees, political lobbying, etc) in recent years, Netflix has been notably absent from the offenders’ list. Why has Netflix been able to keep […]
Kings of Capital Deliver Healthy Fundamentals Across Time Periods
While the first decade of this millennium (FY00-10) saw banking industry credit grow rapidly at a 22% CAGR, the past decade (FY11-21) has seen the banking system credit grow at only a 10% CAGR. The life insurance industry has also seen similar trends – premiums grew at 22% CAGR during FY01-10 vs. 8% CAGR during […]
Why Read ‘Diamonds in the Dust: Consistent Compounding for Extraordinary Wealth Creation’
“In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t read all the time—none. Zero. You’d be amazed at how much Warren reads—and how much I read. My children laugh at me. They think I’m a book with a couple of legs sticking out.”– Charlie Munger (source: https://fs.blog/2014/06/charlie-munger-recommended-books/) There […]
The Rushmore Yardstick
We are living in a world of information overload and especially for an investor who seeks to build an informational edge, ends up devouring anything and everything that comes her way. Given there is only so many hours in the day and only that many useful sources of information, even fewer in terms of insight, […]
How machine learning gave Australia an edge in the Tokyo pool
Lots of interesting stories that have come out on the recently concluded Tokyo Olympics. But this one’s on a subject that is applicable to a whole host of disciplines outside of sport (indeed, we featured one on cricket recently). In an increasingly digital world, where there is plenty of data footprint, big data analytics can indeed be […]
Necessary but corrosive: Lucy Kellaway on ambition
Most successful people have been ambitious, especially in competitive fields. Yet some of us, like this author, have been brought up to despise ambition, especially the kind chasing power, fame and wealth. Whilst the easy answer to this conundrum is that balance is key, like in most other things in life. Yet, Lucy Kellaway concludes […]
Why Satan should chair your meetings
There has been widespread concern about the effectiveness of office meetings from even before the pandemic. Now, with the same moved to screens, people are even more weary. Barring a few organisations such as Amazon which insists on a pre-circulated note to improve the effectiveness of meetings, most firms struggle with this issue. In this […]
How FC Barcelona blew a fortune — and got worse
For as long as we have been adults, Simon Kuper has been one of the most erudite football writers in the world. In this piece – which was written before FC Barcelona announced Lionel Messi’s exit – Mr Kuper dissects how FC Barcelona messed up its capital allocation and, in the process, lost its place […]
For more content on our strategy, visit the archives GO TO ARCHIVES