Tren Griffin
Writer of the 25iq blog, where he distils "a dozen things I've learned" from investors, founders and thinkers. Author of Charlie Munger: The Complete Investor and A Dozen Lessons for Entrepreneurs.
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What they believe
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A business that cannot measure and manage itself as well as its competitors do is in serious danger.
If a competitor can measure and manage their business better than a startup can manage its business, the founder of that business is in deep trouble.
25iq.comSaid 1 Oct 2024This on korrents
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Risk comes not only from one's own ignorance but also from dealing with other people who do not know what they are doing.
Risk is created not only from not knowing what you are doing, but also from dealing with other people who don't know what they are doing.
25iq.comSaid 8 Jun 2019This on korrents
The bold line is korrents’ wording; the quote is theirs. These 2: what they wrote before what they said aloud, one per source, newest first.
Beliefs
Korrents What they believe 17 beliefs — each backed by an exact quote.
Each is a — compiled by korrents.com, not by them: the one-line wordings are korrents', the quotes are theirs.
Recent
A business that cannot measure and manage itself as well as its competitors do is in serious danger.
If a competitor can measure and manage their business better than a startup can manage its business, the founder of that business is in deep trouble.
A Dozen Things I’ve Learned from Jenny Lee about Investing and Business Said 1 Oct 2024
Selling an undifferentiated product while expecting returns above the cost of capital is unrealistic.
Making the same product as your competitors and expecting to earn a profit greater than your cost of capital is a triumph of hope over experience.
A Dozen Things I’ve Learned from Jenny Lee about Investing and Business Said 1 Oct 2024
Product-market fit can be lost as unpredictably and suddenly as it was gained, often through word of mouth.
Word of mouth can tear apart product/market fit unpredictably and suddenly.
A Dozen Things I’ve Learned from Jenny Lee about Investing and Business Said 1 Oct 2024
Show 14 more
Risk comes not only from one's own ignorance but also from dealing with other people who do not know what they are doing.
Risk is created not only from not knowing what you are doing, but also from dealing with other people who don't know what they are doing.
Secrets of Sand Hill Road (Venture Capital and How to Get It) — Know Venture Capital Before You Get Married to a Venture Capitalist Said 8 Jun 2019
Raising too much startup capital too early can reduce innovation rather than help it.
Too much money raised too soon by a startup can be inversely proportional with innovation.
Secrets of Sand Hill Road (Venture Capital and How to Get It) — Know Venture Capital Before You Get Married to a Venture Capitalist Said 8 Jun 2019
Being unable to raise venture capital is not a tragedy for a business.
One important point being made here is that not being able to raise venture capital is not a tragedy.
Secrets of Sand Hill Road (Venture Capital and How to Get It) — Know Venture Capital Before You Get Married to a Venture Capitalist Said 8 Jun 2019
People who set Key Results often mistake completing a task for delivering an outcome that benefits customers.
In creating Key Results people too often mistake the completion of a task with an outcome that benefits customers.
50 Cent versus Kanye: Should Fiddy have used the Objectives and Key Results (OKR) system? Said 10 Nov 2018
A Key Result measured over just one week is too short a time horizon to be a good Key Result.
Fiddy's Key Result in this case was based on a period of just one week, which is arguably too short term to be a good Key Result.
50 Cent versus Kanye: Should Fiddy have used the Objectives and Key Results (OKR) system? Said 10 Nov 2018
The pace at which the world changes is increasing.
The world is not only changing more quickly than it ever has right now but the pace of change is increasing.
Execution is Everything Said 28 Oct 2018
People who become skilled at making trade-offs live better lives as a result.
So much of life involves making trade offs that people who acquire skills in making them live better lives a a result.
Execution is Everything Said 28 Oct 2018
Large organizations tend over time to prioritize process at the expense of renewing their core business.
Large organizations have a tendency over time to focus too much time on process and not enough time and energy on renewal of the franchise of the business.
Execution is Everything Said 28 Oct 2018
People who cannot overcome the tendency to discount the future risk ending up elderly and poor.
People have ingrained dysfunctional tendencies that may result in huge numbers of people who are elderly and poor since they can't overcome this discounting problem.
Lessons from Annie Duke (Author of “Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts”) Said 13 Oct 2018
Having many children as a strategy against old-age poverty creates negative societal spillovers.
In many societies people try to solve this old age problem by having a lot of children who might take care of them when they are older and that creates even more negative societal spillovers.
Lessons from Annie Duke (Author of “Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts”) Said 13 Oct 2018
An investor has extensive information about the past and the present but, by definition, none about the future.
An investor has a lot of information about the past and the present, but by definition has zero information about the future.
Lessons from Howard Marks’ New Book: “Mastering the Market Cycle – Getting the Odds on Your Side” Said 6 Oct 2018
A business is more likely to fail from taking on too much complexity than from lacking resources.
Businesses die more often from indigestion than starvation. Finding ways to grow without new resources is often what creates new value value.
Lessons from Scott Belsky’s Book “The Messy Middle” Said 29 Sept 2018
A startup is not simply a smaller version of a large business, and what causes success or failure in one does not necessarily apply to the other.
A startup is not just a small version of a large business. What causes success or failure in one does not necessarily apply to the other.
Lessons from Scott Belsky’s Book “The Messy Middle” Said 29 Sept 2018
Cities outlast businesses partly because their residents continually experiment with new solutions that let the city adapt to changing conditions.
Part of the reason why cities last longer than businesses is that residents of cities are continually experimenting with new solutions and those solutions over time enable the city adapt to changing conditions.
Lessons from Scott Belsky’s Book “The Messy Middle” Said 29 Sept 2018
What is a korrent?
A korrent is a belief a person has stated in their own words: one sentence stating the claim, backed by a quote and a source, kept at korrents.com.
Under a name here, the quoted block is what they actually said. The korrent beneath it is the claim those words support, in korrents' wording — tap it to see the record, its source, and who else holds it.
Nobody here wrote their own korrents. They are compiled from public statements, and a person can change their mind, which is recorded too.
Recommends rcmnd
rcmnd What they recommend 9 things, 11 mentions — each backed by an exact quote.
Compiled by rcmnd.app, not by them: the quotes are theirs, and each links to the post it was copied from.
Recent
Loved Shoe Dog
The best book I have read about being an entrepreneur is Shoe Dog by Nike founder Phil Knight. If you are interested in business and have not read this book, what exactly are you reading?
25iq.com 18 Aug 2018
Loved The Messy Middle
I was up very late last night reading a great book that will appear in stores soon written by Scott Belsky entitled The Messy Middle that explains why this passion is required.
25iq.com 28 Jul 2018
Recommends The Misbehavior of Markets
Mandelbrot and Richard Hudson are the authors of the influential book The Misbehavior of Markets: A Fractal View of Financial Turbulence. I suggest you read this book for yourself (even though it is not an easy book to read).
25iq.com 9 Dec 2017
Show 8 more
Loved The Devil’s Financial Dictionary
Janson Zweig has written a wonderful book entitled The Devil’s Financial Dictionary in the style of Bierce that is both entertaining and educational.
25iq.com 6 May 2017
Loved The Success Equation
Asking me to select my favorite book written by Michael Mauboussin is like asking me to pick my favorite child. I love them all the same. But if I had to choose one book it would probably be The Success Equation.
25iq.com 1 Oct 2016
Loved Margin of Safety
I have previously written a blog post on Seth Klarman that included some quotes from his excellent book Margin of Safety.
25iq.com 24 Sept 2016
Recommends The Most Important Thing
When I am asked by someone what book they should read first to learn about investing I often suggest Howard Marks’ The Most Important Thing
25iq.com 17 Sept 2016
Loved The Devil’s Financial Dictionary
One of my favorite writers, Jason Zweig of the Wall Street Journal, is the author of the newly published and wonderful book: The Devil’s Financial Dictionary.
25iq.com 3 Jul 2016
Loved Zero to One
Peter Thiel described the period well when he wrote in his excellent book Zero to One:
25iq.com 9 Jan 2016
Loved Investing: The Last Liberal Art
The best book on this is by Robert Hagstrom entitled: Investing: The Last Liberal Art.
25iq.com 18 Apr 2015
Loved The Success Equation
The very best books on this topic have been written by Michael Mauboussin, including The Success Equation.
25iq.com 14 Mar 2015
Where they publish
Blog 25iq.com His long-running blog on investing, business and technology.
Link verified 5 Sept 2026.
x.com @TrenGriffin Griffin's X account.
Recent
- Over betting is math. Estimation error on assumptions is possible, so fractional Kelly (eg, 1:4) is the margin of safety answer. 15 Oct 2026 en.wikipedia.org
- Ooops. 15 Oct 2026
- What are the respective contributions of the two parties to this joint venture? Are they equal? Are the potential gains equal? 15 Oct 2026
Show 17 more
- If you have a leveraged bet on stocks in the DRAM index, then ouch! Micron, Samsung and SK Hynix are the core names. SanDisk, Kioxia, Seagate and Western Digital are part of the mix. Waiting out volatility without leverage can help investors avoid peeing on an electric fence. 15 Oct 2026
- What investor today is like this? Jesse Livermore = luck was mistaken for sound process. Jesse was short going into the 1929 crash (profit reportedly = $100M). Over the next four years he lost it all. The curse of a windfall = can be over-betting (Kelly!) 15 Oct 2026 25iq.com
- "Cell phone" was once the dominant way to describe a mobile phone in the US. The rest of the world used "mobile phone," which had been in use since the mid-20th century, when you connected via radios tied to a single powerful tower per city (no cells). October 1983 (United States): Ameritech (part of AT&T/Bell) launched the first commercial cellular network in North America in Chicago, coinciding with the release of Motorola DynaTAC 8000X ("the brick"). The term eventuality cell phone became redundant and mobile phone or smartphone ascendent. 11 Oct 2026
- AI turbocharges power law distributions. Charlie Munger: "In terms of which businesses succeed and which businesses fail, advantages of scale are ungodly important.” Network effects = demand side economies of scale. My post on network effects is: 11 Oct 2026
- In the late 1999s Craig McCaw asked me to spend time at Benchmark to find opportunities to co-invest. The fun for me was being a student. Bill Gurley, Bruce Dunlevie, Andy Rachleff, Kevin Harvey, Bob Kagle, Steve Spurlock and David Beirne were my teachers. 11 Oct 2026
- Lower radio frequencies (e.g.,800 MHz) travel farther and penetrate buildings better. Higher frequencies provide more capacity, but are more easily blocked by objects. When forced to choose between radio frequencies select "both." The antennas, the transmit power, and the distance between transmitter and receiver are some additional factors. When building dense terrestrial cells, lower propagation can be +. Many tradeoffs. RF is a black art. 10 Oct 2026
- The Great Blue Heron in this picture taken this morning is my competition when fishing for sea run cutthroat trout. My setup: 9 foot 5-weight, medium-fast action fly rod Floating line 9–12 ft leader, typically 3X–5X Steamboat Island Leech fly 10 Oct 2026
- "You can never be too rich or have too much radio spectrum." Quote attributed to different people including Craig McCaw though its exact origin remains unknown. He's holding my first mobile phone (now in a museum). >$4,000 cost. 10 Oct 2026
- "When comparing the data volumes for sharing screen content as live stream with GenAI services, we noted up to 9x higher uplink data volumes compared to sharing the screen with services like Facetime or Zoom." 10 Oct 2026
- AI wireless traffic has a higher uplink distribution, with 74 percent downlink and 26 percent uplink. 10 Oct 2026
- SpaceX can deploy terrestrial cellular equipment using the acquired 800 MHz spectrum without most customers replacing phones. The frequencies are in LTE Band 26 and 5G n26. Supporting LTE Band 26 in a phone does not tell us whether already deployed SpaceX satellites support those frequencies for direct-to-phone satellite service. Satellite modifications may be required for non terrestrial service. This isn't a hard technical issue to solve. iPhone: Apple's specifications list both bands on many U.S. models, including the iPhone 16 and 17 families. Android: Many recent U.S. Samsung Galaxy and… 10 Oct 2026
- I promise that it is a coincidence that I am also seeking $100 billion in financing, but the funds are needed in my case to purchase new fly fishing equipment. 10 Oct 2026
- "Robinhood's margin book grew to a record $21.6 billion in the second quarter, up 127% year over year To margin invest on the platform, users must have a portfolio value of at least $2,000." 👀 Total margin debt hit an all-time high of around $1.5 trillion in June 10 Oct 2026 finra.org
- The ability of an investor with margin loans to hold assets during a correction until the price recovers is dependent on their ability to provide additional collateral for the loan. Control is on timing can be lost. Ruin can result from leverage. 10 Oct 2026 cnbc.com
- 800Mhz spectrum SpaceX acquired was originally used for Specialized Mobile Radio (SMR) to provide services for localized taxi-cab and truck dispatch services. Fleetcall (later known as Nextel) consolidated the licenses into a nationally usable block. Motorola supplied the gear 9 Oct 2026
- "It took us six months to make our first 27 satellites. Now we can easily make 27 a week." 9 Oct 2026 arstechnica.com
- Radio spectrum is like invisible money. SpaceX will acquire 100% of Grain's nationwide 800 MHz spectrum portfolio. "Get Low" by Lil Jon & the East Side Boyz is really a song about in-building penetration of radio waves at frequencies like 800 MHz. 9 Oct 2026 wsj.com
Link verified 5 Sept 2026. Recent items update automatically from the channel.
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