“The desire to get rich fast is pretty dangerous
One of my absolute favourite quotes from the great Charlie Munger, who passed away this week aged 99.
I have studied Buffett and Munger deeply over about a quarter of a century, so it is no wonder that my bias is towards investing in businesses that are Zebras, not chasing the dream of being a Unicorn ( for more on Zebras see Your business must make a profit )
I was talking to a young start-up entrepreneur the other day and freely admitted to my bias when they put to me that they were seeking to decide whether to focus on current revenues of building out new products for the future.
Having assessed so many companies for investment over the decades a question I always key in on is “when will you be cash-flow positive?”, so my bias towards his decision was towards patiently building revenues and profitability.
In a world where so many seem to seek to raise round after round of funding at higher and higher valuations, please do consider the value in patience, in committing to your idea, what you bring with your products or services.
Where everyone is rushing, for many business ideas there is great competitive advantage in being patient.
Oh, and I wrote a similar post over three years ago, called Nobody wants to get rich slow , which quoted Buffett (again) whilst noting the steady growth in readership of this blog as it passed the 1,000 blog milestone. That post also highlighted that I was about to launch my podcast with the first episode.
Fast forward over three years and the blog now has over 2,000 posts. The podcast ran for over 100 episodes, all of which are hosted and will remain in the library on this site.
As to what “rich” is, as I continue along the “ok so far” path of regular tests after having had cancer last year, I feel rich in that this site now has a library of over 100 podcast conversations and 2,000 posts, all there for my children to listen to and read should things, well, not go as smoothly as they have so far.
As long as I have enough, money and stuff bores me. My riches are in people, ideas and, yes, legacy left behind.
Thank you Charlie Munger, you were rich in many ways and enriched many with your ideas.