Viewing entries tagged
pattern recognition

The Bouncer Algorithm

The Bouncer Algorithm

The best bouncers I ever met weren't big guys with no necks and bad attitudes. They were curators. Psychologists. Pattern recognition machines in leather jackets. And everything they knew about building the perfect room, I now use to build the perfect portfolio.

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Bottle Service and Baby Formula

Bottle Service and Baby Formula

If you looked at my investment history with no context, you'd think I have the attention span of a golden retriever at a tennis ball factory. Impossible Foods. Athletic Greens. SandboxAQ. Cirkul (the flavored water bottle that Gen Z can't put down). Flexport. Canyon Bikes. Kraken. A real estate portfolio spanning Santa Monica to Brooklyn. And yes, infant nutrition. 

But here's what I've learned after building two companies, exiting both, writing a book, and deploying capital across more than fifty startups: every single investment decision I make runs through the same pattern recognition engine. And that engine was built, improbably and irreversibly, in the New York City nightlife scene of the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Let me tell you what I mean.

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