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Legendary Investor Bill Gurley on Investing Rules, Finding Outliers, Insights from Jeff Bezos and Howard Marks, Must-Read Books, Creating True Competitive Advantages, Open-Source Strategies, Adapting Mental Models to New Realities, and More (#651)

Legendary Investor Bill Gurley on Investing Rules, Finding Outliers, Insights from Jeff Bezos and Howard Marks, Must-Read Books, Creating True Competitive Advantages, Open-Source Strategies, Adapting Mental Models to New Realities, and More (#651)

January 31, 2023
in Success

“The minute you set a very nonflexible rule, you might be setting yourself up for a mistake. And venture, I have found, is a world where that happens frequently.”
— Bill Gurley

Bill Gurley (@bgurley) has spent increasingly than 20 years as a unstipulated partner at Benchmark. Surpassing inward the venture wanted business, Bill spent four years on Wall Street as a top-ranked research analyst, including three years at Credit Suisse First Boston.

Bill moreover maintains a blog on the incubation and economics of high-technology businesses tabbed Above the Crowd.

Over his venture career, he has worked with such companies as GrubHub, Nextdoor, OpenTable, Stitch Fix, Uber, and Zillow.

Bill has a BS in computer science from the University of Florida and an MBA from the University of Texas. He is moreover a chartered financial analyst. Bill is a workbench trustee at the Santa Fe Institute, a research and education part-way focused on the study and understanding of ramified adaptive systems.

Please enjoy!

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. You can watch the interview on YouTube here.

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The transcript of this episode can be found here. Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.

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#651: Legendary Investor Bill Gurley on Investing Rules, Finding Outliers, Insights from Jeff Bezos and Howard Marks, Must-Read Books, Creating True Competitive Advantages, Open-Source Strategies, Adapting Mental Models to New Realities, and More

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Want to hear another podcast episode with a world-class investor? Have a listen to my most recent conversation with Oaktree Wanted Management’s co-founder Howard Marks, in which we discussed navigating unprecedented uncertainties, crowded versus uncrowded opportunities, the state of the American economy, finding higher-signal sources of information, and much more.

#431: Howard Marks on the US Dollar, Three Ways to Add Defense, and Good Questions

What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.

SCROLL BELOW FOR LINKS AND SHOW NOTES…

SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODE

Connect with Bill Gurley:

Twitter | LinkedIn

SHOW NOTES

Editor’s note: timestamps will be widow shortly.

The typesetting Bill calls “the most efficient short-form MBA one can find.”
Sell-side analysts vs. buy-side analysts.
Financial models, rules of thumb, and making (sometimes wrong) decisions.
Howard Marks and Stan Druckenmiller.
Micro vs. macro investing.
Institutional Investor’s All-America Research Team.
Expanding distribution.
Return On Invested Wanted (ROIC).
Repurposing good ideas for volitional applications.
The conviction of network effects.
SaaS and unshut source.
Bet sizing.
Equal partnership over hierarchy.
Lessons learned from partners.
Recommended resources.
Problems unshut source can solve.
Building a largest network with the interest graph.
Dissecting Bill’s Twitter thread well-nigh risks and sudden valuation resets.
The Metaverse.
Revenue and earnings quality matter.
Undervalued competitive advantages.
Jeff Bezos: corporate mad scientist?
The counterintuitive condemnation of visitor camaraderie.
Tobi Lütke.
Books Bill has gifted frequently.
The Santa Fe Institute.
Bill’s board.
Cultivating anti-tribalism.
Twitter: what is it good for?
Newsletters and other resources Bill relies on.
Bill’s typesetting in progress.
Regulatory capture.
Predicting what America will squint like in 10-20 years.
Parting thoughts.

MORE BILL GURLEY QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW

“The minute you set a very nonflexible rule, you might be setting yourself up for a mistake. And venture, I have found, is a world where that happens frequently.”

— Bill Gurley

“The process through which you unquestionably put the words to paper and structure the paragraphs, structure the argument, you get smarter. Sometimes you decide, ‘Oops, I was wrong.’ You learn by putting it all together.”

— Bill Gurley

“If you’re starting a visitor considering you think it’s going to be a good lifestyle, holy shit. You’re in for a rude awakening.”

— Bill Gurley

“Open source is way largest at ramified problems than simple problems.”

— Bill Gurley

“Why do we use government dollars to fund stuff that becomes proprietary?”

— Bill Gurley

“Be less tribal.”

— Bill Gurley