Circle of Competence Issue #87

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"But as long as you live, don't ever forget that while you may succeed beyond your fondest hopes and your greatest expectations, you will never succeed beyond the purpose to which you are willing to surrender. Furthermore, your surrender will not be complete until you have formed the habit of doing the things that failures don't like to do." - Albert E. N. Gray, The Common Denominator of Success, H/T Shane Parrish

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

I've been thinking about starting a digital collection of my all-time favorite business leaders' writings, speeches, and podcast material for a while now and would like to introduce The Business Vault. I have learned an immense amount by reading and studying the greats and hope that others will be inspired to study the history of the greats in business as well. The idea is that this will be an open-source, one-stop-shop for the most timeless content from the greatest investors and operators in history.

As you will notice, I have NOT uploaded much material to the folders yet, but would love help populating the digital library with content. Whether it's PDF'd articles, annual letters, podcasts, or transcripts, all submissions are welcome. Moreover, if you'd like to be an integral part of this project (for there is no doubt, this will be an on-going project), please respond to this email for access to edit the Google drive folder. I'd love for this to be an open source, collaborative project with anyone and everyone who would like to contribute, so please don't hesitate to reach out and get involved!

Please check out The Business Vault and reach out with any suggestions for content and people I need to include (my venture capital/entrepreneur section is lacking!).

LINKS

Investing:

A Place for Real Estate Debt in Global Investing (Oaktree Insights, disclosure: long $BAM, owner of Oaktree)

The Great American Tax Haven: Why the Super-rich Love South Dakota (The Guardian)

Self-storage: How Warehouses for Personal Junk Became a $38 Billion Industry (Curbed)

How Luxury Units Turn into Affordable Housing (City Labs)

Japan's Past is Europe's Prologue (Blackstone, H/T Brandon Trama)

Black Edge (John Huber)

Aramco's IPO - history and current valuation (Aswath Damodaran)

Regime Change and Value: A Follow up Post on Aramco (Aswath Damodaran)

Joel Greenblatt on Investing off the Beaten Path (Value Investing Legends)

Technology:

Online Streaming: Television's Looming Car Crash (Financial Times)

The Coming Age of Generative Biology (Flag Ship Pioneering)

Integration and Monopoly (Ben Thompson)

The Softbank-WeWork End Game: Savior Economics or Sunk Cost Problem? (Aswath Damodaran)

Zombie Miles And Napa Weekends: How A Week With Chauffeurs Showed The Major Flaw In Our Self-Driving Car Future (Jalopnik)

Keith Smith on free market healthcare (EconTalk)