I’m a sucker for a good conspiracy theory. Even when I know it’s all shite. They’re endlessly entertaining. But a handful are actually true, and arguably one of the chart-topping legit conspiracies is the fact that the De Beers blatantly cornered the global diamond market, and artificially propped up the value of the stone by strategically stockpiling most (~90%) of the...

I was on a flight to Moloka’i, a lesser-travelled but no less beautiful part of Hawaii. Brexit had passed the vote just a few months prior, followed quickly by Trump’s first electoral victory. Weeks later we would also discover that Sarah was pregnant with our second child. Each would prove to become world-altering events for us, in different ways. My usual pre-flight routine in airports tends to...

I was planning out the standard “Here’s my predictions for 2023” piece, commingled with the usual hat-tips to personal resolutions… and I hit a wall. You’ve heard it all before. My predictions will mostly be wrong, or irrelevant. And the world’s in a place where the last thing you need is some extra noise (or underhanded guilt). So I have a different message this time: 2023 is the year...

Of the world’s largest 10 companies in 2022, 6 of the 10 are entirely internet-based, not including Apple, which though technically a hardware company – is arguably the main internet gateway. So let’s just call it 7/10. While this seems intuitive to us today, this was the stuff of pipe dreams not too long ago. Even at the height of the first dot-com bubble in 2000 (when the...

It was the turn of the millennium, and Guinness was in trouble; an old man’s drink trying to reinvent itself. Their primary challenge lay in how the drink is served. The three-part pour process was seen as too onerous and time-intensive for the incoming generation. It was believed that younger customers would simply favour conventional beers. But rather than change the classic Guinness...

One of the most poignant insights that’s ever originated from TV comes from a surprising source. It’s Ed Helms who delivers the epic, gut-punching one-liner: ~ Andy Bernard (Ed Helms) in NBC’s The Office That one really got me. I think for most of us, it’s not just the nostalgia of the “good times” that elicits such a strong reaction. Rather, it’s the tragedy of what we understand today...

“Show me the incentive and I’ll show you the outcome”. While a tad oversimplified, Charlie Munger’s famous one-liner is sort of like the Occam’s Razor of human behavior – especially at scale. People are generally far more driven by self-interest than by any other factor. Indeed, history clearly demonstrates that while people might tolerate a certain degree of...

Kodak’s demise is the stuff of legend; a modern-day Shakespearean tragedy… For over a hundred years, Kodak held a near-monopoly on the manufacture of camera film & photo production. And if Canon, Sony & Pentax were the proverbial car companies of photography, then Kodak was the world’s largest oil producer – by a wide margin. But just as how Tesla rapidly went from...

A few weeks ago I woke up at an ungodly hour and drove down to an obscure pharmacy at the break of dawn – camping chair in hand. A few hours later, someone stuck a needle in my arm, and I was symbolically transported into a whole new, post-pandemic world. A world where lumber prices have increased by 700%, where JPEGs sell for $69M a pop, and where housing prices have gone parabolic –...

Entrepreneurship has always gone hand-in-hand with personal development… It takes a lot of perseverance to get a business off the ground, so it’s no surprise that the internal fuel needed to mentally stick it through is going to require some proverbial “gas stations”. It’s similarly unsurprising to see Tony Robbins (and all of his various alternatives) keynoting at...