two things I want to talk about today, no particular order: how I identify what I think to be good investment opportunities, and “selling shovels” and that old saying.

this is not binding advice or anything like that, so, don’t get it twisted. just my personal methods.

anyway.

the first part, how I pick things to invest in, is pretty simple. I look for things that resemble infrastructure. I look for things that other things are going to be built on. building an app is cool. you know what’s cooler? building an IDE that other people can build apps in. or building an operating system that the apps run on. or the hardware used to operate the computers the apps run on. you see what I’m getting at here? this is what people mean when they say, “you have to think in primary principles”. find the bottom layer and start curating your strategy from there.

some may read this and think, “wow, interesting take, but what’s your performance? are you even a successful investor?” and to those people I say “yes. so far, yes”. the lowest — lowest — return in my portfolio is at +42%. that’s the lowest. all-time the portfolio is up 209%; it’s only a little over 4 years old.

these are obviously vague numbers that don’t paint the full picture, but I think you guys can get the point. the portfolio is doing well, and the above thoughts are how I approached its development.

the second point, selling shovels, was the thing a few years ago when Nvidia was getting really hot. sort of near the end of the first crypto run / start of AI boom. everyone was saying “Nvidia is selling shovels in a gold rush” because they were selling the hardware that powered all the software.

the game is now changing though. not much, just a little bit. there’s a new arena emerging. we’re seeing a stark contrast between people who operate on the bleeding edge of technology and people who yearn for the days of old when computers still beeped and groaned when connecting to the internet. there is, of course, an opportunity here, as social stratification becomes starker, for one to work as a sort of liaison between groups.

be a gatekeeper, and charge people a tax to pass through the gates. arbitrage the different levels of ignorance across groups. be an edge in the social graph, connecting disparate nodes. do you see what I’m getting at here? you need to be a connector of dots and charge people a premium to connect those dots, if you’re good enough.

this is largely the goal of the collective. when I say I’m “building a private intelligence agency” what I’m really doing is finding ways to arbitrage information across disparate groups of people. I’m influencing memetic canals. I’m controlling the flow of spice. I’m showing gamers how finance bros operate and tech dudes how sports guy vibe out. in creating dense networks of people, I’m also creating space for opportunities to emerge. and that’s what we’re all really after, innit?