MISTAKES

I've made a lot of mistakes in my career. I own them all. The key is not making the same mistake twice.

I lost $35,000 to a Ponzi scheme. It was the worst and best thing that ever happened to my finances.

My biggest mistakes have all come from shorting great companies that I thought were overvalued.

I shorted Netflix and it taught me that being smart about valuation doesn't mean you're right about the stock.

I lost my home in 2008 while working as a financial planner. Knowing the right thing and doing the right thing are very different.

We have made mistakes. Some were errors of analysis, some were errors of process, some were errors of judgment. The important thing is to identify which kind so you don't repeat the same one.

In my case, my judgment was really bad. I was in a way of love with the way that person, Adam, has his vision.

We made a lot of mistakes in 2007 and 2008. The ones that hurt were not the positions we took but the assumptions behind why we took them. The process was right; the inputs were wrong.

Early in my career, I was trying to be Gordon Gekko. That was the most expensive mistake I ever made.

My biggest mistakes have always been selling too early. When you find a true compounder, the correct holding period is almost always longer than you think.

Dell was the hardest investment of my career. We fought the buyout, we believed in the value, and we were right on the math but wrong on the outcome. Sometimes the market doesn't care about your math.

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.

Look, I'm not going to say I'm perfect. I've made mistakes. But I built something that changed the world.

I built a library dedicated to financial mistakes because if investors studied history, they'd stop repeating it.

My Luna tattoo will be a constant reminder that investing requires humility.

Being wrong is not the problem. Being wrong and not knowing why is the problem.

We made a mistake with CartaX. We violated the trust of our customers. We shut it down and we're learning from it.

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

The market rallied 80% and I was short. That's the worst feeling in investing — being right about the fundamentals and wrong about the timing.

Going public via SPAC seemed like a good idea at the time. In hindsight, we needed more time to figure out recurring revenue.

Paying $7.3 billion for Grubhub at the pandemic peak was the most expensive lesson of my career.

We made mistakes expanding too fast into too many categories. A toothpaste company doesn’t need to sell jeans.

Whatever failures I have known, whatever errors I have committed, have been the consequence of action without thought.

I made a lot of mistakes. But if you look at the broad picture, the money got used well.

Do your losing early. The investor who makes his mistakes early, rather than late, will come out far ahead.

Every mistake I made taught me something the classroom never could. I am not ashamed of my past. I am built from it.

I have made mistakes. Some of them have been very costly and very public. I own them.

Hollywood was exciting. It was also very expensive. I learned some very expensive lessons about the entertainment business.

We made mistakes. Big ones. But the core strategy — the land, the gas, the shale — that was right. History will show it was right.

Selling FedMart was a mistake. Not because the price was wrong but because I hadn't finished what I started.

I spent extravagantly because I believed in experiences. The problem is that some of the experiences I invested in were my own ego.

The mistake I have done is actually investing in a superstar founder, but not knowing who they can talk to.

We did let our quality standards slip.