I mentioned some time ago that Charlie Munger's "take a simple idea and take it seriously" has haunted me since I first encountered it. (h/t )
This week's Commonplace essay, the last of 2021, is about exactly this idea.
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To sort of riff on this idea, a little:
Take a simple idea and take it seriously. Work out all the implications. Seek out all the case studies. Read where it worked and when it didn't.
And then figure out how to use it for the rest of your life.
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This piece is mostly about Nick Sleep's and Qais Zakaria's Nomad Investment Partnership, where — over the course of 13 years — they discovered one simple idea and then worked out all the implications, until they 10x'ed their investor's money.
Then they quit.
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I find it aesthetically pleasing that this is the last essay of the year.
The first essay of the year was about another career built around a different 'simple idea': that is, Bill Gurley, and the arc of his career after discovering network effects in Waldrop's Complexity.
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Oh yes, I should add that I had this bit in the middle of this week's piece ;-)
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"Sleep and Zakaria imply that not all moats are created equally. It’s tempting to think that if a moat produces overwhelming pricing power, this results in unparalleled profits and therefore acts as an unalloyed good."
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My thesis is this is how a lot of great products & businesses get built. You could say Costco was very serious about their ideas of scale/efficiencies as well.
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