All I want to know is where I'm going to die, so I'll never go there.
The most important thing you can do is to know what you don't know.
In life and business, there are two cardinal sins. The first is to act precipitously without thought and the second is to not act at all.
Poker taught me how to make decisions under uncertainty. Investing requires exactly the same skill.
The key to making great decisions is understanding what you know and what you don't know.
The hardest part of seed investing is staying honest about whether you're applying your actual thesis or defaulting to comfortable pattern-matching.
You can't invest in the rear-view mirror. By the time you're certain, it's too late.
Speed matters in venture. Not recklessness — speed. The analysis never gets you to certainty. At some point you have to decide whether you have enough conviction to act.
Your environment shapes your decisions more than your intelligence does. Design your environment before you design your portfolio.
I moved to Zurich to get away from the noise. The best investment decisions I've ever made were made in silence.
I don't need to be in New York. I don't need to be on CNBC. I need to read annual reports and think. Richmond is perfect for that.
People who learn to say no to things have a much greater chance of saying yes to the right things.
I don't believe in taking right decisions. I take decisions and then make them right.
We faced an unprecedented situation in January 2021. We made the decision to restrict buying to protect the firm and our customers.
Every investment should have a thesis and a timeline. If it's not working, cut it.
Be willing to make decisions. That's the most important quality in a good leader.
Speed matters in business. Most decisions should be made with about 70% of the information you wish you had.
Consensus is the enemy of speed. If everyone agrees, you're probably not moving fast enough.
You do not need to understand everything to make a great decision. You need to understand the one thing that matters most — and price it correctly.
I left school at 16 to race in Europe. Most people thought I was crazy. Most of the best decisions of my life looked crazy at the time.
I chose Athleta over the bigger offer because they understood what I was building. Money that conflicts with your mission is just a slow way to ruin your brand.
I chose UConn because Geno Auriemma builds champions — on the court and in life. Every investment I make now I judge by the same standard: does this build something that lasts?
The data is the answer. If you don't have data, you have opinions. I prefer data.
All the knowledge in the world is worthless unless backed by the courage to act.
Without a command of probability theory, you are just a gambler in the dark.
Philosophy teaches you to sit with uncertainty. Most of the important decisions you face in business are uncertain decisions. That training has mattered more than I expected.
The question we always ask is: what is the best use of the next dollar? Not what cause is worthy, but what will this specific dollar actually do.
It was a calculated risk. Every big bet looks crazy before it works.
I did not get here by being passive. I got here by making the hard calls.
The best CEOs I know are the ones who can change their minds when the facts change.
A leader who is afraid of failure will not take bold action. Bold action is what separates transformational leaders from managers.
A PhD in chemistry taught me one thing above all: be rigorous about what you actually know versus what you assume. I try to apply that every day.
The decision to pause Jadar was difficult. But we are not going to develop a project without a social license. That is a line we will not cross.
We made some extremely hard decisions in 2015 and 2016. But they were the right decisions. Not the comfortable ones — the right ones.
The difference between a company that survives and one that doesn't is often one decision made at the right time.
Leadership in a crisis means making decisions with incomplete information. You cannot wait for perfect data.
We say no quickly, and we know we will get things wrong.
A good partner prevents the other from making a bad investment.
Founders have to make decisions with little to no data within a certain deadline, so they have to grab as much knowledge as they can and process it to figure out what decisions they need to make.