Sterling Terrell

smart ideas from books (mostly)

Asymmetric Opportunities To Tilt Luck

Asymmetric Opportunities To Tilt Luck

I have been pondering this tweet thread on asymmetric opportunities for a few days now.

This is nothing other than tilting luck in your favor by doing things that have:
A) low potential risk
B) high potential reward

The 9 Examples:

  • Go on first dates
  • Invest in startups
  • Start a small company
  • Create media
  • Create software
  • Go to a party
  • Live in a big city
  • Tweet
  • Build in public

But the asymmetric payoff of investing in startups has particularly piqued my interest at this point in my life.

For many of these, I am either already doing, or are no longer an option…

I blog, I tweet, I have been going to publish a book forever now…

But my wife would be less than pleased if I started dating again. 🤣

And yes – I wish I had considered all of this when I was 18.

Industry That Needs A Major Upgrade

Industry That Needs A Major Upgrade

Asking what archaic industry could use a major upgrade might not be a bad place to start when looking to innovate.

  • What businesses still are using fax machines?
  • What industries adapt technology slower, and why?
  • Where can a significant impact be made in the most obvious way?

I mean, he thought this – and then went and did Paypal.

It’s conviction and focus on an amazing level.

In the years that followed, Musk considered starting an Internet bank and discussed it openly during his internship at Pinnacle Research in 1995. The youthful Musk lectured the scientists about the inevitable transition coming in finance toward online systems, but they tried to talk him down, saying that it would takes ages for Web security to be good enough to win over consumers. Musk, though, remained convinced that the finance industry could do with a major upgrade and that he could have a big influence on banking with a relatively small investment.

-Ashley Vance, Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future (Amazon)

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