Frozen pond near our house

Feynman [Problem-Solving] Algorithm

1. Write down the problem.
2. Think real hard.
3. Write down the solution.

Low-flying hawk

History behind naming a new building in Seattle as “low flying hawk”

“Low-flying-hawk”: In the early days of AWS, the most vocal, highest standard, critical (of us) AWS customer was a person who called himself low-flying-hawk on the AWS Forums. We would constantly be trying to see what low-flying-hawk thought of new features, pricing, issues we were experiencing, etc. He was like a customer in our meeting rooms, without being there. One day, about a year into obsessing about low-flying-hawk, somebody innocently asked "how much money does low-flying-hawk spend per month with us?" We'd never asked ourselves that (which I liked). The answer was something like $2.37/month. But not caring about whether low-flying-hawk was a big spender or not, and treating his feedback as importantly as our biggest spenders, and trying to make sure the customer experience was fantastic for individual developers helped us raise our standards and serve the all-important (and viral) technorati well in the first few years.”  

-Andy Jassy

The difference between first & second level thinking (by Howard Marks)

Moats

Sustainable Competitive Advantage or as Buffet calls them "Moats". Moats can come from a combination of:

1. Supply side economies of scale
2. Demand side economies of scale (network effects)
3. Brand
4. Regulation
5. Intellectual property

The evidence that a moat exists is pricing power. If pricing power is dropping the moat is shrinking. 

BillG -"Intellectual property has the shelf life of a banana".

If the source of the pricing power is hard to identify, the source is usually brand.  

25 percent margins

“I’ve always said 25 percent margins are not a forever thing.” Bill Gates. Forbes, February 28, 1994

Moats created by existing network effects or others factors are brittle even though they are strong. All moats deteriorate over time the only questions are (1) is how fast the process happens and (2) can the company generate a new moat with the cash flow

The Behavior Gap

"It's not that we’re dumb. We’re wired to avoid pain and pursue pleasure and security. It feels right to sell when everyone around us is scared and buy when everyone feels great. It may feel right—but it’s not rational.” —From The Behavior Gap, By Carl Richards