Vinod Khosla: “Every major area has been innovated by high-risk experiments, whose chances of getting off the ground were very low. Take Airbnb. In 2007-08, if you’d said people would just let a stranger into their house, into their spare bedroom . . . give me a break! Luckily for them, what happened was we had the financial crisis in 2008, just when they were getting going. Suddenly, the proposition wasn’t: will somebody let a stranger into their house in their spare bedroom? The choice, for about 10 per cent of the people in the US at least, was: my mortgage is under stress; do I lose my house or let a stranger in? Given that choice, they didn’t want to lose their house. I recently asked [Airbnb co-founder] Joe Gebbia this question and he said: “Absolutely right, people who would never consider letting a stranger into their house did, because the alternative was losing their house and not being able to pay their mortgage right after the crisis.” So luck plays a role, but also innovation plays a role. Almost all societal large progress happens because of some improbable.”
Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore: “Catalysts for inflation vary—excessive government spending, printing too much money, currency devaluations, specific and general shortages of goods and services. Once embedded in an economy they can create long-lasting inflation. The secret to curing inflation isn’t economic collapse and high unemployment but the opposite: pro-growth policies that create incentives for more goods, more employment, less government spending and sound money. As the economy produces more, prices go down. Conversely, austerity means less goods produced and less employment. How does putting people out of work and reducing the supply of goods cause the prices of goods to fall?”
Rui Ma: “In fast fashion, there’s something known as the “impossible triangle.” It’s the perfect production scenario, where a company can 1) quickly onboard lots of new styles at 2) low prices, while 3) being hyper-efficient in managing massive volumes of inventory. Unlike Shein, those other upstarts didn’t quite crack the third edge of that triangle. And that’s what left them trailing — according to Crunchbase — the fourth most-valuable tech startup in the world, with an estimated $100 billion valuation.”
