WSJ: “In the 1950s, around the time Jonas Salk cracked the polio vaccine, a metallurgist named John V. N. Dorr became the champion of a different lifesaver: a white line on the right side of the road. For years, Dorr told anyone who would listen—and everyone who wouldn’t—about his simple way of making highways safer. A line on the side of the road, he argued, would give drivers somewhere to aim their eyes at night other than oncoming headlights. It was both cheap and incredibly effective, which made it a brilliant investment. Over time, his revolutionary stripe of paint would reach billions of people and guide drivers across the planet. To this day, you depend on it without knowing anything about it.”
Pradyu Prasad: “No matter what you’re doing, from building a civilization on Mars to getting a summer internship, you will have to ask people for help. Yet, most people get this crucial skill wrong. They put themselves at the front of their request, when they should be putting the other person there. But isn’t getting help just charisma and luck? No, asking for help is a skill, not an attribute you are assigned at birth like green eyes. How do you ask for help from people? There is only one principle. Put yourself in their mind. All good communication is grounded in an understanding of the reader’s mind. And so, I have some heuristics I would recommend when you ask for help from people you don’t know.”
WSJ: “For decades, thousands of niche, world-class manufacturers that form the backbone of the German economy relied on an unassailable moat: unmatched quality. Now that moat is drying up. The Mittelstand—a broad tier of midsize manufacturers, mainly specialized in capital and intermediate goods and reliant on exports—once thrived by making machines for factories everywhere. But China is now closing the quality gap and offering prices as low as half those of their European rivals.”
FT: “When I started out, people bought shares based on the yield. That worked reasonably well if dividends were well supported. But it didn’t help with fast-growing tech stocks that used all their income for reinvestment. Other measures are needed. Growth investors tend to focus on cash flow expectations; value investors think more about the balance sheet and assets. I like to look at both. The discounted cash flow — in other words, the money you expect to be generated in future — must underpin the price of the shares. It should reward you appropriately for the risks you take when you could just put your cash in the bank instead. Either that or the sale value of the assets of the business should be greater than the enterprise value — the market cap plus debt.”
