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e.g. if you think you're early to crypto b/c you've read a bunch of articles on macro-economics but haven't actually gotten your hands dirty then you might be late majority but think you're an early adopter. (since no one will admit to being a laggard)

there are plenty of people who think they are early adopters but haven't even used the product. See this thread for an illumination:https://twitter.com/NeerajKA/status/1339619705192124418?s=20 …

It's a late majority temperament that fools itself(FOMO) into believing that it's part of the early majority. It *can* be an effective strategy since it's using the crowd to calibrate, but b/c the temperament is faked, the unexpected volatility often shakes loose the position.

Likewise, many early adopters were "lucky". They acted when value was *not* at all clear but in order to maintain the position of leadership as a thought leader, have to delude themselves(and thus others) that it was obvious all along.

What this collective self-delusion creates is sth I'll term the seed/sapling delusion. The belief that you're buying seeds when you're actually buying saplings. You've already missed out on the massive % growth from seed -> sapling and it's now the sapling -> establishment phase

The seed -> sapling phase is mostly innovative and experimental. It's an entirely different set of philosophies than the sapling -> established tree phase. It's like the difference between science and engineering.

The two phases have fairly different capital deployment strategies. VC firms and hedge funds are different and can have wildly different valuation strategies.

VC has a *much* higher tolerance for failure. Also this means you should never take a job rec from them:https://twitter.com/a_yawning_cat/status/1253741871509041152?s=20 …