Defense, Databricks, and Diversification | Colossus Weekly

Best of the Week

Weekly Episode Recap

Episode Highlights

1. “Curiosity is the only guide. And it's not the curiosity of the person sitting next to you. It's not the curiosity of your parents or your teachers. You have to ignore these people. They want you to do what they want to do, which is irrelevant. You only have your life. You have to choose what you want to do.” Art of Investing 

2. “People ask, would you do this for free? No, you don’t understand. From 2018 to 2020, I was literally paying to do it. Every month, I’d look at my savings account and think, “Oh shit.” But I didn’t give a damn. I had this relentless self-belief to make this work. Now it’s an unbelievable business that will make my unborn grandchildren rich.” Art of Investing

3. “Trust people when they tell you what their problems are but don't trust them when they tell you what the solution is.” Invest Like The Best

4. "I'm trying to do things that are in the U.S. interest. I'm trying to do things that are in the interest of our allies. I want to do things that are material and large." Invest Like The Best

5. “Money flows fast when the customer believes the opportunity is fleeting.” Founders

6. “Find information asymmetries. Don’t tell other people about them. Not even your lover.” Founders

7. “Make what you’re building amazing, but don’t do that to the exclusion of integration with other things that people might also want for very good reasons.” Business Breakdowns

8. “We've done 40 episodes of Business Breakdowns this year. On 21 of those episodes, we have done multiple recordings to get to a finished product.” Making Media

9. “Media by design is a slow-growth industry. It's not like software that we can outsource a lot of the activities through machines. Media is a human-intensive, labor-intensive industry that grows slowly.” Making Media

10. “Finance is an industry of faiths. There are no ground truths. There is ‘scientific evidence’ based on some empirical facts about the world in the past, but the world changes and markets are reflexive, and it's hard to know what is fundamental truth is going forward.” Making Markets

11. “If you look back at the major financial crises over the last 100, 200, 300 years, leverage is always at the scene of the crime. But it's not leverage on its own, it's concentrated leverage.” Making Markets

Breakdowns Research

Read our research on Databricks’ origin, business model, and competitive position.
Prepared by Erick Mokoya ahead of Zack’s conversation with Yanev.

Offers from our Partners

Pioneer Program

Thanks to Erick Mokaya, Jefferson Rumanyika, and John Rodriguez for their help and research this week.

We are always on the lookout for pioneers to help grow our content library. If you are interested - let us know here.