I just got back from TED 2017. It was a fire-hydrant of ideas. Here are the big takeaways for me:
1. Li Lu: Do they deserve my capital?
There is so much to admire in Li Lu. An orphan from China who was one of the Tianneman Square leaders, he is now an investor with a star-studded list of clients — including Charlie Munger.
One of his stock picks is BYD Auto — he introduced the company to Berkshire Hathaway which now has a 10% stake in the business.
My question to him was how he develops that sort of deep confidence in a management team. How does he figure out if they are truly high quality people or not?
He gave me me a simple, and in retrospect, an obvious question to ask:
Do they deserve it my capital?
In a sense it is the mirror image of something that Charlie Munger has said: the way to be successful in life is to truly deserve it.
And so I have added this as a checklist item: Do the management deserve for the capital markets (or me) to allocate capital in their direction? Does their business add value to their customers and to their shareholders? Do the management allocate capital well, and are they respectful of the shareholder capital? And do they behave in a way that would make me proud to be associated with them?
There is already a quesiton on my checklist on whether the business exists for the “greater good”, and to some extent this replicates the question. But it also adds to it, and comes at things from a slightly different angle.
I think that I would have certainly avoided some mistakes, had I asked this question.
2. Tim Ferris. Stoicism and Fear Mapping.
I have spent plenty of time reading self help books and studying motivational speakers. The one who had the biggest impact is certainly Anthony Robbins — who was kind enough to include a short write-up of me in his book, “Unshakeable”. But I have also enjoyed Tim Ferris’s podcast very much — he has an extraordinary view on life.
Given his success, I was rather surprised to hear Tim Ferris tell us all at TED that he is bi-polar, and that at one point it brought him very close to suicide.
In sharing this, Tim took a risk, but he also won the us over: it’s one of the best examples of a lesson that I learned through writing my book: If I want people to really listen to me, I need to make myself vulnerable.
Then Tim shared one idea, and one tool that really got him through his most difficult periods.
Stoicism
I write in my book about Marcus Aurelius. Tim has done a deeper study, starting with Seneca. It’s a powerful philosophy.
Fear Mapping
The tool he shared is Fear Mapping: The idea is that rather than to plan out success, we should plan out our fears — which will help us to conquer them.
If it takes a while for Tim’s talk to come out, here is a snippet from his google talk in which he goes through the same ideas.
3. Atul Gawande: Find a Coach.
When someone, polymath style, achieves at the highest level in more than one field, it’s worth paying attention, and Atul is one of those. In addition to being a world class surgeon, he’s a world class writer — who siezes on the important ideas that need to be expressed and expounds on them. I was lucky enough to be profiled in his book, “the Checklist Manifesto”.
Atul’s latest idea is to find a coach, when seems to have been confined, up to now, mainly to sports teams. Gawande recruited his former professor to observe him in surgery with some surprising results.
I am determined to find the right coach(es) to help me manage the Aquamarine Fund. If you think you know the right person, feel free to get in touch with me.
4. David Miliband” It’s not just about the Refugees.
Like myself, and David Cameron, Miliband studied PPE at Oxford. In the past, I would have never paid all that much attention to a British politician of the left. But in with no pro-European options available within British politics, he’s suddenly become very interesting — to me and many other Britons who would have never thought of voting labour in the past.
Unfortunately, he’s not able to run for Prime Minister — because he’s not a member of Parliament.
The key idea that he shared with the TED audience is simply that when it comes to the refugees, it’s not just about them. It’s also about us. Our values. What we are as a society.
What we do with the refugees will determine who we are and what we become.
We must not let the refugees down. More importantly, we must not let ourselves down.
5. Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks: be true to your faith and a blessing to others, regardless of their faith.
I was particularly proud to hear Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. I think that he impressed everyone with his love of humanity and his reasonableness.
His talk was thoughtful and extraordinarily well researched.
The supreme religious challenge is to see God’s image in one who is not.
Conclusion
These were not the only ideas worth sharing: A number of other speakers had a huge impact on me.
Ray Dalio spoke about his principles, in advance of his book.
Laura Galante gave an extraordinary talk on the new ways that the Russians and other bad actors are hacking our very minds for their political aims.
Anna Rosling, the daughter-in-law of Hans Rosling gave an talk on Dollar street — which puts the comparative lives of all of us on this planet into perspective.
In all, there were more than 100 speakers — most of them were inspiring. The people at TED have a blog post that summarizes many of the ideas that the speakers shared.
If you want to get closer to the TED speakers, I also created a spreadsheet of all the speakers along with some ways to get in touch with them which you can view here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pR9oJCu3StDgLfS93yUmZk6PmzKBS4KIGxEUvASaWwk/edit?usp=sharing
