Eric Smit’s Post

There is still wisdom in news…if you look for it. But it is full of clickbait and poor superficial reporting, so it’s easy to dismiss news as mostly gossip or just high level “news”. However, if I try and ask myself “Is there a message I can take away?”, news can provide lessons beyond the reported news (which is often far more valuable to me). The linked article is a great example. It would be easy to just skim the article and conclude Andreas was greedy, a fool, arrogant or something like that. But there are 2 BIG lessons here for me when I look deeper. Andreas Bechtolsheim is amazingly successful: - He’s worth an estimated $13.3bn - He co-founded Sun Microsystems in the 1980’s - He co-founded Arista in 2008 now with a mkt cap of $100bn - He turned a $100,000 investment in Google in 1998 to over $1.2bn in 6 years - He naturally has a HUGE reputation in Silicon Valley We can all dream of a fraction of this type of success. 😊 He was presented with an opportunity to make an easy quick profit via insider trading, which he's been found guilty doing. But the profit of $415k is a rounding error on his net worth. The article talks about the illogical rationale of risking his reputation for such a small profit, and maybe it was due to “greed” or prior success making him feel “invincible” or “entitled”. Regardless of his reason there are 2 main lessons for me in this article beyond don’t break the law. 1. Ask myself what could go wrong and never do anything that is a) legally or morally questionable, or b) if it goes wrong could have a devastating impact. You'd think pretty obvious right, but when greed presents itself...Buffett coaches his portfolio CEO’s wisely to guide their decisions by a simple mantra “Don't do anything you wouldn't want to see on the front page of the newspaper.” 2. More importantly, as our funds become more successful, is to keep my feet firmly on the ground and not drink my own Kool-aid. Did I miss any lessons or wisdom?

SELLING IS DIFFERENT FROM MARKETING Clever pricing tactics: First paint a clear picture of product FEATURES, land it with clear illustrations. Then pitch comparative, higher price points, before revealing the actual price offer. It makes the customer THINK s(he) is getting a great bargain. This is good selling (at least by the standard of the 80s) but this is NOT marketing.

How to pitch