CONVICTION

Know what you own, and know why you own it.

The stock investor is neither right nor wrong because others agreed or disagreed with him; he is right because his facts and analysis are correct.

It's not whether you're right or wrong, but how much money you make when you're right and how much you lose when you're wrong.

I have always believed that a single talented analyst, working very hard, can cover an amazing amount of investment landscape.

I looked at the data and thought — this is going to end badly.

The larger the divergence between price and value, the more compelling the opportunity.

I have never wavered on the innovation theme. The question is timing. And we believe timing is irrelevant over a five-year horizon.

I bought Tesla when everyone thought it was going bankrupt. I held through every dip. That is the only way you catch a 10x.

If you understand Bitcoin, you buy as much as you can and hold it forever. There is no price at which I would sell.

The question is not whether Bitcoin will succeed. The question is how long it will take.

The key risk is not that Bitcoin goes to zero. The key risk is that you sell it at the wrong time.

When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.

I would rather be wrong in public and learn than right in private and stay comfortable.

If you don't believe in what you're selling, nobody else will either.

Every great investment I ever made seemed crazy at the time I made it.

Don't diversify for the sake of it. If you have conviction, concentrate.

Twitter was this weird little thing that nobody at Google took seriously. I couldn't stop buying it.

The best founders are the ones who see the world differently and refuse to accept no for an answer.

Every billion-dollar company looked like a terrible idea at the beginning. That's the point.

I read the Bitcoin white paper on a Saturday night in 2010 and couldn't sleep for a week. I knew this was going to change everything.

NFTs aren't going away. The speculation might cool down — it already has — but the technology of provable digital ownership is permanent. We're building for the long term, not the hype cycle.

Being right isn't enough. You have to be right and act on it. Most people are right occasionally but they don't make money because they don't have the conviction to act.

I've never sold Tesla shares. Not once. Because the thesis hasn't changed — if anything, it's gotten stronger.

If you haven't spent serious time understanding why a company has a durable advantage, you don't own an investment — you own a lottery ticket.

I have never sold a single Bitcoin. I don't plan to.

I was convicted on four counts of fraud. I am going to prison. I still believe the mission was right. The execution — I take responsibility for the execution.

Manhattan always comes back. Always. People who bet against Manhattan real estate over the long run have been wrong for 400 years.

We bought Hilton for $26 billion right before the world ended. Everyone said we were idiots. We made $14 billion in profit. The best deals are always the ones that feel the worst when you do them.

I emptied my entire 401(k) to fund Calendly. Every penny of my retirement savings. My financial advisor thought I had lost my mind. That was the best investment I ever made.

I pleaded guilty. I paid the fine. I went to prison. I accept responsibility. But Binance is still the largest exchange in the world and crypto is still going to change finance forever.

When you buy a stock, you should be willing to hold it even if the stock market shuts down for five years. If you can't do that, you have no business being in equities.

We put $11 million of our Facebook settlement into Bitcoin at $8. People thought we were insane. At $60,000 a coin, it doesn't look so insane anymore.

We've been told we're too early to every trend we've ever been part of — social networking, Bitcoin, crypto regulation. Being early is painful. Being right is profitable.

When FTX collapsed and SOL went from $260 to $8, I thought — either we're dead or this is the greatest buying opportunity ever. The technology hadn't changed. Only the price had.

The SEC sued us in 2020 and we decided to fight instead of settling. Three years and millions in legal fees later, we got a ruling that XRP is not a security on exchanges. Some fights are worth fighting.

I left a tenured professor position at Cornell to build Avalanche. In academia, that's the equivalent of setting your career on fire. But some things need to be built, not just published.

The stock going from $132 to $5 was brutal. But the stock price doesn't change the physics. Our cells still show 80% capacity after 800 cycles. Markets are opinions. Lab results are facts.

People say fusion is always 20 years away. They say the same about solid-state batteries. The difference is we've already shipped cells to OEMs for testing. We're not 20 years away — we're years away.

Chrome was my first big bet at Google. Everyone said we did not need a browser. Now it has 65% of the global market. I learned to trust my instincts.

Price is what you pay, value is what you get. I learned that from Ben Graham. I proved it with $2 billion in 2008.

Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful. But put real money behind it, not just bumper stickers.

If you can't explain why a business will be worth more in ten years, you don't understand it well enough to own it.

We bought Amazon at $30 because we understood scale economics shared. The price was irrelevant — the flywheel was inevitable.

Most investors diversify because they don't have conviction. We owned three stocks that made up 80% of the fund because we understood them completely.

The line between conviction and stubbornness is only visible in the rearview mirror. I've been on both sides, and I can't always tell you which side I'm on until it's over.

The stock is down 80% from our SPAC. That is the market's opinion. Our technology on the highway is our opinion. I trust the highway.

We are the number two in endpoint security. CrowdStrike is number one. But number two with autonomous AI will eventually beat number one with human analysts.

Do you really like a particular stock? Put 10 percent of your portfolio in it. Make the idea count.

Mark offered me three billion dollars. I was 23. Saying no was the easiest decision I ever made.

If you are not willing to be the villain in someone else's story you cannot be the hero in your own.

Every dark store is a small bet. Five hundred dark stores is a big bet. We are all in on quick commerce.

When Yahoo offered to buy Facebook for a billion dollars I helped convince Mark to say no. That was a two hundred billion dollar no.

The metaverse is not dead. The hype died. The technology kept building. Those are two different things.

We raised 400 million before mainnet. That is either extraordinary confidence or extraordinary hubris. We are betting on confidence.

The EMC acquisition was 67 billion dollars. The largest tech deal in history. When I bet I bet big.

The plant-based market is in a slump. Beyond Meat is down 95 percent. We believe the previous generation simply was not good enough. AI makes it better.

I want to invest in things I actually use and believe in. Not just write checks.

Let everyone else call your idea crazy... just keep going. Don't stop. Don't even think about stopping until you get there.

I invest in brands I believe in and products I use. If I can't explain what a company does in two minutes, I'm not investing.

A man must believe in himself and his judgment if he expects to make a living at this game.

Be patient and focus on the long term. The market will test your conviction. That's its job.

Macro investing is about having a view and the courage to act on it. Most people have the view. Few have the courage.

The market rewards conviction. The market also destroys overconfidence. The line between them is thin.

Bitcoin is the best-performing asset of the last decade. At some point, ignoring that becomes intellectual dishonesty.

Terra is not an experiment. It is a movement.

I still believe in the long-term thesis for crypto. The execution was the problem, not the vision.

We've burned through nearly $1 billion. Building a bank from scratch is expensive. But being a real bank is worth it.

If you believe in something, put your money where your mouth is and then go on TV and talk about it.

Acting and investing are both about conviction. You have to commit fully or not at all.

I put $27 million of my own money into that whiskey. If you won't bet on yourself, why should anyone else?

I've held through four 80% drawdowns. Each time, everyone said crypto was dead. Each time, it wasn't.

If you believe in the technology, size your position accordingly.

Staples was a $2.5 million bet. It became a $19 billion company. That's what conviction looks like.

I've sold two biotech companies. Butterfly is the hardest and most important thing I've ever built.

The stock dropped 90%. The technology didn't. Selling to hospitals is slow. The device still works.

Rising interest rates made people question rental yields. We doubled down — when mortgages are expensive, people rent.

Most doctor visits don't require physical presence. That was true in 2006 and it's true now.

Everyone said buying UFC for $4 billion was insane. The UFC is now worth $12 billion. I love being called insane.

We paid what Chelsea was worth to us, not what the market said it was worth.

Facebook offered us $3 billion. We were 23. Everyone said we were stupid to turn it down.

Scrub Daddy is the most successful Shark Tank product ever. $200,000 investment. Over $200 million in sales. I knew in the first minute.

I write 50-page memos on single stocks. If you can't write 50 pages about why you own something, you shouldn't own it.

Fidelity let me manage $15 billion. I left because the best investors eventually need to run their own money.

Carvana at $4 was the most obvious opportunity I've seen in years. The business was improving. The market was pricing in bankruptcy.

I wrote an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg suggesting he cut 20% of employees. Three weeks later, he laid off 11,000 people. The stock tripled.

Ten positions, high conviction. That's the whole strategy. Diversification is for people who don't do enough research.

The SPAC with Grab was the biggest ever at $40 billion. The timing was terrible. I still believe in the company.

Brexit was the most obvious trade I've ever seen. Sterling was overvalued. The polls were wrong. I bet everything.

After 15 years at Tiger, I wanted to invest my own way. Smaller fund, fewer positions, deeper relationships with founders.

Most hedge funds own 50 stocks. I own 10. If you really know your businesses, you don't need 50.

Diversification is a hedge against ignorance. If you've done the work, concentrate.

Flipkart was a billion-dollar bet in a country where most investors wouldn't put a million. That's where the returns were.

YFI went from $3 to $40,000 in two months. I didn't keep any. I wanted to prove that a fair launch could work.

We believed crypto was going much higher. Why hedge something you believe in?

Everyone said owning inventory and logistics was suicide. They said be a marketplace. I said: I want to guarantee every product is real.

I went $53 million into debt to follow my dreams. You have to be willing to lose everything to gain everything.

I would rather miss a tournament than compromise my principles. My body, my choice.

I don't need to be famous. I need to be right. And Spotify proved I was right.

We backed Uber when it was just a black car service for San Francisco techies. Nobody else wanted to write that check.

Coinbase was obvious to us because we believed crypto networks would be as important as the internet itself.

We wrote our senior thesis about car-sharing in 2006. Investors told us nobody would get in a stranger's car. Twelve billion rides later, they were wrong.

Two investments. Nearly $50 billion in combined value. In venture, you only need to be right a few times. But you need to be really right.

We put $3 million into Zomato. It was not the most sophisticated investment thesis. We believed in Deepinder and we believed in the category. Sometimes that is enough.

The best trades are the ones where you see it six months before everyone else and have the conviction to size it properly.

I spent $340 million running for president and I’d do it again. Some things are worth more than money.

Tampa is the most undervalued city in America. I’m putting my money where my mouth is.

Twitter was chaos. Three CEO changes, constant internal fights. But the product had something people needed. That’s what you bet on.

At Google, I learned to think in data. At Redpoint, I learned to act on conviction. Theory combines both.

Stemcentrx was rejected by every other VC. We wrote the check because we read the science. That’s the job.

USV’s DNA is contrarian conviction. Fred and Brad built that. My job is to carry it forward into new categories.

Crypto is volatile, but the underlying technology of decentralized networks is the most important innovation since the internet.

Colombia will be one of the great economies of the 21st century. I have bet everything on it.

When I met Jack Ma, I didn't see a struggling startup. I saw someone who understood something about China's future that nobody else did.

I gave up a career to join something I believed in. That is the only way to build something that matters.

I invested in Twitter when people told me it was a toy. Turns out the toy became the town square.

I'd rather own 100% of something I understand than a diversified portfolio of things I don't.

I left OpenAI because I thought we could do better on safety. Not because I thought they were bad, but because I thought the stakes demanded the best.

Small teams with high conviction will outperform large teams with consensus every time.

Every position must have a thesis. If you cannot explain why you own it in two sentences, you should not own it.

The greatest investment reward comes to those who by good luck or good sense find the occasional opportunity in a lifetime to put all their resources in one investment almost certain to pay off hugely.

Once you find a good reason to buy, stay with it unless you find an equally good reason to sell.

All the knowledge in the world is worthless unless backed by the courage to act.

Hong Kong has been written off many times. Every time, it proved the doubters wrong. I have bet on this city my whole life and I do not regret a single day of it.

In India, the biggest opportunities are always in plain sight. People just don't have the conviction to act on them at scale.

When I saw Super Sentai in Tokyo, I knew. I just knew. Nobody believed me for nine years, but I never stopped believing it.

I measure my net worth in Bitcoin. The dollar amount is irrelevant to me.

They told me to stop spending money on the Barnett Shale. I kept going anyway. You do not abandon a thesis because it has not paid off yet.

The biggest risk isn't concentration — it's owning mediocre businesses. If you know what you own, concentration is not risk. It's conviction.

The critics said Force India was dead. They said Aston Martin was finished. I am comfortable being wrong in public. What I am not comfortable with is giving up on things I believe in.

We are in the business of backing founders who are missionaries, not mercenaries.

Most great businesses look like bad ideas right up until they don't.

It is a must to believe in one's product.

We believe in backing companies with more conviction. We would like to co-invest and bring value-add via people.

Investing is a story of vision, courage and patience. You need the vision to see what is going to happen, the courage to bet on it and the patience to hold on to it.

Chase the story behind the stock, not the money on the table. Money will make you rich, but the story will make you wealthy.

Invest like a bull, sit like a bear and watch like an eagle.

Once you get hold of a good stock, you cannot cash out with a Rs 10 profit or a Rs 20 profit. Learn to ride your winners.

In the earliest days, you are betting on the founder more than the business plan.

I would rather back a founder ten years too early than a company that is already obvious.

Most founders who pitch to me, I don't allow them to open their laptops. You have to know everything in your head. If you're good at cooking, you don't need to peek at the recipe, right? Just cook it on the spot.

I think, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates were dropped out from Harvard, and now there is a guy who wants to drop out from Harvard in front of me. That's why I said 'I've got no idea what you're doing, it seems you're doing a great thing, and they said they want to focus on travel'.

When you jump, the net appears.

When Fred and I started Paradigm five years ago, there was no master plan. What we had was a shared curiosity for the future, deep conviction in crypto, and a desire to advance the frontier of what's possible.

I asked to be paid in Bitcoin. To me it was obvious this was going to be big.

Volatility does not scare me. Missing the important networks does.

I would rather be right and early than comfortable and late.

Conviction only pays if you can hold through the pain.

If you would not roll up your sleeves and help a network, you probably should not own it in size.

Being early and surviving the swings is the price of catching something before everyone believes.

Bear markets are the best time to build excellent technology. In many ways the pace of infrastructure development is faster than ever.

We're still running the 85-person crypto team, and we're 100% committed on crypto as a space.

In some ways, the winter filters out the nonbelievers, right?

But I think many of our best investments are when the founder is thinking much more advanced than ours.

Oh, this is big. This is the next revolution of humanity.

You have to be willing to look wrong for a long time in this market. Conviction without patience is worthless in crypto.

In crypto, concentration is how you win and how you get hurt. I would rather own a few things I deeply believe in.