Growing up, I remember that most Indians couldn’t bake at home. Ovens were largely limited to commercial bakeries.
Today, almost anyone can own an oven. Yet most people still buy their cakes from bakeries.
Because being able to bake, wanting to bake, and being good at baking are three very different things.
Being charismatic or charming is extremely simple: go through life as you are god's fav and everything happens in your favor. Genuinely believe that you are blessed by fortune. You will observe people magnetically drawn to you, intrigued by you and love your presence.
I'd expand the moats left to:
- Proprietary data or content: data nobody else has, or unique content you can create
- Network effects / community: users make it more valuable for each other
- Audience / distribution: you can get attention on demand
- Physical component: hardware, locations, real-world operations
- Capital: owning assets and investing (esp into the AI companies as they are and will suck up large parts of the economy)
- Regulatory: licenses and legal barriers
After Bill Gates became friends with Warren Buffett, he began to diversify his portfolio and sold Microsoft shares.
Bill Gates' fortune today is 138 billion dollars, if he hadn't diversified it would be 1.33 trillion dollars.
Life advice from Alex Karp:
“You just need enough money so you don’t need to think about money.”
“And if you stay off meth, and live below your means, you’ll have enough money.”
This law changed my life:
"Refuse to give petty problems acknowledgement or credibility, as attention fuels their significance."
Ignoring it is often the best solution.