Takeaways from 5 Books

The Intelligent Investor, Lessons from the Titans, Built from Scratch, The Power Law, and Richer, Wiser, Happier.

After 1.5 years of reading books way outside business and investing, I returned to these fields. I’ll try to take advantage of momentum and go through as many things as I can. Below, I’ll share a couple of takeaways from the books I read in the past month or two.

The Intelligent Investor

I read this back in 2022 and thought it was the best book about investing. After 3 years and everyone telling me I was wrong, I had to re-read it to check on my former self. What I found delighted me: Everyone else is wrong. Just read this and you’ll see why:

Lessons From the Titans

This was a book recommended by Sidecar Investor. It’s a great account of some exceptionally run, overlooked companies. It’s focus, alike The Outsiders, is on the operations side of these businesses. Ideas that stuck:

• The best HR teams are not about hiring superstars. They are about making average people (80% of org) perform a little better.

• Business processes are powerful and can single-handedly make you win.

• Good managers know when to grow the company’s asset base and when to stop doing so. After a point, returns might be higher when optimizing assets and trying to extract every dollar out of them.

• $1 generated in oil and gas is just as green as one generated by a SaaS.

• Culture is dictated top-down, and it’s destroyed when arrogance creeps in at the top.

• There are operational edges even in commoditized industries.

We discussed this book with Sidecar in a podcast episode:

Built from Scratch

This is an autobiography of the guys who built The Home Depot. It surprised me. One of the most remarkable business books I’ve come across. All ideas I might’ve read about, these guys applied. And not only that, they multi-dimensionally applied them, with example showing their understanding.

The thing I thought the most about while reading was that it gave me a feeling of reading Jeff Bezos. Bezos always mentioned Amazon focused on 3 things: (i) Lower prices; (ii) faster delivery; (iii) broader selection. I’d never had figured that the HD guys had pushed for this on an extreme level, 20 years earlier, with the exception of faster delivery.

Customer obsession, Bezos’ overarching principle, was also Home Depot’s. And I’ve never seen it practiced to the extent HD did.

The Power Law

This book gives a historical account of the VC industry. Excellent read. Things that might’ve stuck the most, though I need to think it further through:

1. Difference between VCs. There’s a spectrum of investment stage and how to deal with risks depending thereon, VC involvement, invest on product or people, and how much dd different investors need to invest.

2. How much ‘luck’ there is to it.

3. Why where you reside matters.

4. How the business of business is connecting people.

Richer, Wiser, Happier

This book is good in that it covers a wide array of investors, many of whose approach differ in nature. It has, in addition, a philosophical angle to it, for the author borrows quotes from everywhere; fascinating. The great problem it has, in my opinion, is that investors have been so influenced by Buffett, Munger, and Graham, that you rarely find new ideas after reading them.

Another thought was triggered after reading the chapter on Greenblatt. I came across an interview of Feynman that was life-changing to me last year. He spoke about the fun he experienced while thinking; something I had seen in Darwin, Cicero, and others, but that I hadn’t fully grasped. The best investors share the same trait as these guys, as theoretical physicists. They enjoy just thinking.

Personal Commentary

This was a quick recap. There’s a lot more to each of these reads, naturally. But I just wanted to see what was top of mind with regards to each book. Hope you found it useful.

Best, Giuliano