Happy Saturday! Here is your weekly dose of the world of Miles, learning, techno-optimism, business thoughts, and ways to be a better human.
Jockey vs Horse. In investing, is it more important to choose the best management team or the best company? We’ve long debated this question. A new contribution to the conversation comes from a UChicago paper with evidence that it is the horse. Using a “dataset of over 16,000 startups (representing over $9 billion in investments) [and] machine learning methods to evaluate the decisions of early-stage investors”, the author concludes that “investors as well as the researchers studying them have focused too much on the jockey and not enough on the horse.” Further the author claims the model can beat venture capitalists by “1000 basis points, totalling over $900 million in my data”. So, an AI can pick companies better than VCs? How do you think about someone discovering a way to make tons of money and then publishing the results?
Jiffy Reader. I recently ran across a browser extension that claims to help you read faster. It accomplishes this feat by changing the weighting of the font to emphasize certain parts of the word to help your skim. Yes, I’m a sucker for any speed reading plan. After using it for a few days, I’m not sure how well it works or how to evaluate it. And I always wonder about privacy with browser extensions.
Behavior or Rules. What should we do to improve our politics? I recently ran across Braver Angels which promotes conversations and relationships among those of different parties. (It sounds similar to BridgeUSA based on college campuses). Others like Citizens University are working on better education and building the habits of civic participation. Or is the best route building political power around a vision of focusing on outcomes? Most convincing to me is something like Unite America’s efforts to change the rules (primaries, voting systems, etc.) to encourage representing a broader public interest.
Until next week,
Miles