Dollar Cost Averaging 101

Many of the brightest minds in the investing world share one common trait: they recommend dollar cost averaging as an investment strategy.

But what is dollar cost averaging and how does it work?

Here's Dollar Cost Averaging 101!

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In 1637, the Dutch Republic erupted into a speculative fever over an unlikely item...the tulip.

Tulip Mania has become a legend synonymous with market euphoria and bubbles. But is this tale all it's cracked up to be?

Who's up for a story?

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1/ The tulip is a spring-blooming flower native to the valleys of the Tien Shan Mountains in Central Asia.

It is believed to have been introduced to Europe in 1554, when an ambassador of the Holy Roman Emperor sent tulip bulbs and seeds to Vienna from the Ottoman Empire.

2/ Tulips gained in popularity as people were attracted to their rich color and ability to grow in sub-optimal conditions.

They soon became a coveted status symbol for the wealthy.

The Semper Augustus, with its colorful, flame-like streaks, was the most desired of them all.

3/ By the early 1600s, the Dutch Republic was entering a golden age.

Many financial innovations popped up during this time - the first stock exchange, for example.

But it was another financial innovation that would propel tulips into historical lore: the futures contract.

4/ As tulips grow slowly and may take several years to bloom, paper contracts were written that entitled the buyer to the future tulips.

These contracts were freely-traded.

So in addition to the physical market for tulip bulbs, a thriving paper market was established.

I recently asked my audience: What is the most genius marketing campaign of all time?

I got 2,000+ responses.

THREAD: 20 of the most iconic marketing and advertising campaigns in history:

De Beers “Diamonds are Forever”

Arguably the most iconic, controversial, and impactful marketing campaign in history.

Created the massive, global diamond industry.

(Note: This will be the subject of a future thread…)

Coke vs. Pepsi Superman Battle

Pepsi ran the Halloween ad on the left. Coke responded with the ad on the right.

Game, set, match.

h/t @perfexcellent

The Original Apple iPod Campaign

“1,000 songs in your pocket”

Simple, intuitive, genius.

Starbucks Wrong Names on Cups

Starbucks employees writing the names of millions of customers in hilariously wrong ways to get them to post the images across social media with Starbucks branding.

For free.

h/t @SleepwellCap

5 simple principles to accelerate your career:

Principle: Follow Your Curiosity

Humans are born with astonishing curiosity.

But somewhere along the way, we're told to stop asking questions.

Push back.

Learn to follow your curiosity—trust it.

For the curious mind, anything is possible.

Fortune favors the curious.

Principle: Operate in Your Zone of Genius

Your Zone of Genius is where your interests, passions and skills align.

Operating in your Zone of Genius means playing games you are uniquely well-suited to win.

It means you can stop playing *their* games and start playing *yours*.

Principle: Adopt a Positive Sum Mentality

Want to get ahead in life?

Start genuinely rooting for others to succeed.

When one of us wins, we all win—winning spreads.

If you adopt that mentality, you’ll become a magnet for the highest quality people.

Principle: Speak Up

Closed mouths don’t get fed.

A little push goes a long way.

Don't sit back and wait for good things to happen.

If you want something—and you’ve put in the work for it—ask for it.

Worst case: you’re told no and nothing has changed.

Best case: it’s yours.

The Feynman Technique—how to learn anything:

The Feynman Technique is a foundational learning method that prioritizes simplicity and depth of understanding.

It was developed by Richard Feynman—an American theoretical physicist who won the Nobel Prize in 1965 for his groundbreaking work in quantum electrodynamics.

So yes, you could say that Richard Feynman was intelligent...

But there are a lot of intelligent people in the world.

Feynman's true genius was found in his ability to convey extremely complex ideas in simple, elegant, digestible ways.

He had observed that complexity and jargon are often used to mask a lack of deep understanding.

As a rule:

If someone uses a lot of acronyms, complexity, and jargon to explain something to you, they probably don’t understand it.

We've all encountered this type of "expert"...

The Feynman Technique is a learning framework that forces you to develop a deep, elegant understanding of a given topic.

It involves four key steps:
(1) Set the Stage
(2) ELI5 (Explain It To Me Like I'm 5)
(3) Assess & Study
(4) Organize, Convey & Review

Let's cover each step:

It is counterintuitive but, if you have N100 to invest, (a) the N100 should be a proportion of a larger income, then (b) of the N100, always reserved N25 for downturns, no matter how good it's going with the N75.

Worried about the recent market drop?

Here are 24 top investing quotes from Buffett, Bogle, Graham, and more that can help🧵

"If you have trouble imagining a 20% loss in the stock market, you shouldn’t be in stocks."

-- John Bogle

"Opportunities come infrequently. When it rains gold, put out the bucket, not the thimble."

-- Warren Buffett

“Individuals who cannot master their emotions are ill-suited to profit from the investment process”

-- Benjamin Graham

"A calm sea does not produce a skilled sailor."

-- Tom Culve

Saturday thoughts on market pull. What is it? How is it different from Total Addressable Market (TAM)? And what ideas tend to have strong market pull?

A thread >>

1) First: "Market pull" != market size.

IMO (and most VCs will disagree!!), market size (TAM) doesn't *really* matter. But market pull DEFINITELY does. For that reason, I've almost never asked a startup about TAM.

Why?

2) First, what is TAM?

TAM is a sizing of how big your market is. A good way to estimate this is - if you can get to all potential buyers and based on how much $$ they are worth to you, how much money can your company make if you took the whole mkt?

3) An example: Say we run an e-commerce site that sells hippo food. TAM in the world:

-1000 zoos have on average 3 hippos = 3000 hippos.
-Each hippo eats $100 worth of food each day
-365 days * $100 * 3000 hippos = $110m per year globally

4) But, we'll come back to this.

Why I don't like TAM - it doesn't take into acct a few things:

A) how hard it is to get customers
B) how much more you can upsell once you have customers
C) how fast the mkt is moving up or down