One of the ways that I believe people express their appreciation to the rest of humanity is to make something wonderful and put it out there. And you never meet the people. You never shake their hands. You never hear their story or tell yours. But somehow, in the act of making something with a great deal of care and love, something’s transmitted there.

– Steve Jobs

We are trying to solve a problem by looking for answers that resemble what we are accustomed to.

– Inside Orchard

Nothing is guaranteed. It’s full of surprises. The constant lesson of history is the dominant role played by surprise. Just when we are most comfortable with an environment and come to believe we finally understand it, the ground shifts under our feet. Surprise is the rule, not the exception.

– Peter Bernstein

There was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away.

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

Platforms of any type that have a data or informational advantage and network effect tend to vertically integrate. Vertical integration might be a necessary enabler of increasing network effects.

– Brad Slingerlend

The example of great scientists is the light which guides all workers in science, but we must guard against being blinded by it. There has been too much talk about the flash of discovery, and this has tended to obscure the fact that discoveries, however great, can only give effect to some intrinsic potentiality of the intellectual situation in which scientists find themselves.

– Michael Polanyi

Being an entrepreneur is hard. Having supportive and caring investors helps.

– Fred Wilson

We make no heroic assumptions in our analysis, hoping, instead, that by compounding multiple conservative assumptions, we will create such a substantial margin of safety that a lot can go wrong without impairing our capital much or even at all. We never invest just to invest and don’t bet blindly on mean reversion or on historical relationships holding up. Our settings are permanently turned to “risk off.”

– Seth Klarman

Accepting that we cannot predict the future — i.e., that there will always be unexpected and highly consequential events — is the first step in becoming less fragile and more adaptable. People should be highly skeptical of anyone’s, including their own, ability to predict the future, and instead pursue strategies that can survive whatever may occur.

– Seth Klarman