• Informational FOMO is not bad but needs to be focused at a time.
  • Understand that the gap between Science Fiction & Science Fact is shrinking. Expand your imagination and do not default from an insatiable curiosity, instead use it to create random parallels that will guide you to finding what has yet to be but will be. “Funnel Wide, and Search High...Read voraciously, try to understand what the consensus is, find a variant perception, something that people aren’t thinking about, and generally for the wrong reason.”
    • Examples:
      • Nvidia went from just being a game chip company to the soul of AI/Machine Learning.
      • Deep dives into metamaterials, lead to Josh being on a board with Bill Gates, which lead to him discovering satellite technology, which leads to him making a deal in tattoo technology.
  • The minority opinion tends to lead to the best outcomes.
  • Firms need to add more value than just talk about adding value. Henceforth, Josh founded Lux Research and helps founders find non-dilutive funding and government resources.
  • Time Allocation > Capital Allocation. Capital loss can always be fixed, time loss can’t.
  • Failure to imagine failure will most likely lead to failure!
  • For founders, there are amazing people and people who are amazing at sales. A startup needs both to be successful. The Storyteller & The Operator. Sometimes that can be in one person, but very rare.
    • Examples:
      • Apple, Steve Jobs (The Storyteller) and Steve Wozniak (The Operator)
      • Microsoft, Bill Gates (The Operator) and Paul Allen (The Storyteller)
  • Founders that have faced extreme adversity tend to be the best. There is some type of emptiness within them that drives against the curve. No matter how tough the problem is to solve.
  • Lux’s Investment philosophy is 100-0-100: “ It’s this mix of ambition and arrogance and intellectual humility. The arrogant part is the 100. I am 100% certain that Lux will be investing in the most cutting-edge, crazy things that you can imagine in the next two years. The 0 part is intellectual humility. I have no idea what those things will be. None. The next 100 is the ambition and the confidence, which is, I know with near 100% certainty where we will find those things, and it’s at the edge of our already cutting-edge companies. As long as I stay curious and paranoid and ambitious.”
  • From a macroeconomic perspective, the more complex an idea the less competition and being a first mover is huge in a vacuum when someone first discovers a sector essentially makes that startup a monopoly so they have all the pricing power as new entrants come up. The price for a product will shift closer to equilibrium. The fact that Josh is trying to identify monopolies is excellent especially as a VC because founders can exit the market when the company should theoretically be at its most profitable monopoly stage.
  • Josh is looking for founders that will influence the economy.
  • Also from a pure finance POV the fact that he’s willing to invest in offshore conosiness with less than ethical laws is fascinating. I don’t agree with a lot of what China does but he’s right they are huge drivers for innovation.
  • A superhuman future will most likely be a reality in our lifetime.
  • Josh usually brings potential deals to his LPs and looks for 2 things. Whether they believe it’s batshit crazy and could be a billion-dollar opportunity. Usually means he is onto something.
  • When asked about evaluating the potential of a moat, Josh had to say this: “...the scariest thing that I think people make the biggest mistake on is, they look at the trajectories of, “Such and such market by 2020-whatever is going to be this billion dollars,” and they’re always hockey sticks. That is never predictive of returns, ever. What is predictive of returns is how much capital is going into the sector. The more capital that’s going into the sector, that is the greater measure, the worse your returns are going to be.”
  • The worst thing for a founder to have is not a bad product but a bad competitor.
  • Entropy gives meaning because everything is about fighting entropy. Dissatisfaction is required to make progress.