TIMING

Being too far ahead of your time is indistinguishable from being wrong.

I've never used valuation to time the market. It's a good tool for knowing what you own, but a terrible tool for knowing when to buy or sell.

The people who beat me to Bitcoin by five years made more money than me. The people who wait five more years will wish they started today.

The pandemic didn't make Zoom successful. It just made everyone else realize they needed what we had already built.

When CMS said health plans need to respond to prior auth requests in 72 hours, most plans panicked. We were the phone call they made the next morning.

We started OpenSea in 2017 and nobody cared about NFTs for three years. Then one day in 2021, everyone cared at the same time. Being early is indistinguishable from being wrong — until suddenly it isn't.

We raised $3.5 billion on a vision of the future. The vision was right. The timing was wrong by about a decade. That's an expensive lesson in patience.

Apple spent $10 billion on Vision Pro and priced it at $3,499. If Apple can't make consumer AR affordable, nobody was going to in 2018. We were early, not wrong.

We almost ran out of money in 2015. Nobody wanted to fund a meditation app. Then the world had a collective anxiety attack and suddenly everyone wanted in.

The AI boom created a GPU shortage. Every company is begging NVIDIA for chips. We offer an alternative. That's either terrible timing or perfect timing — depends on who you ask.

We hit a $4.6 billion valuation. For an enterprise search company. Five years ago, investors would have laughed. Then AI happened and suddenly everyone understood why search matters.

Daishin and I failed at our previous startup — a food delivery app. We were two years too early. With GOAT, the timing was perfect. Sometimes the only difference between failure and a unicorn is timing.

We raised $125 million at a $1.5 billion valuation in October 2022. ChatGPT launched in November 2022. One month. The timing was either perfect or catastrophic depending on which quarter you look at.

I started this in 1999. During the dot-com crash. In Argentina. During an economic collapse. Everyone said the timing was terrible. I say: if you can survive that, you can survive anything.

Twenty years later, Chewy does exactly what we tried to do — sell pet supplies online — and it's worth $10 billion. We were right about the market. We were just 15 years too early and $300 million too short.

Quick bites. Ten minutes or less. Premium content on your phone. The thesis was perfect for the subway commute. Then COVID happened and nobody was on the subway.

I became the youngest self-made billionaire in America at 25. That sounds impressive. What actually happened is I built a data labeling company during the biggest AI boom in history. The timing was the hard part. The labeling was the easy part.

We built the product for 8 years before anyone cared. Then COVID happened and suddenly every company on Earth needed a digital whiteboard. We were ready. Most of our competitors were not.

COVID sent 25 million people to work from home overnight. Every single one of them needed a way to explain things without scheduling a Zoom call. We were already there with a polished product while everyone else was scrambling.

Standing on the right wind, even pigs can fly. The key is to find the wind — not to be a better pig.

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.

The real flood of dead EV batteries won't arrive until the late 2020s. We're building the infrastructure now so we're ready when it does. You don't build the recycling plant after the batteries pile up.

Midnight delivery is our sweet spot. Nobody else is open at 2am, and that is when people want snacks the most. Zero competition, maximum willingness to pay.

The pandemic created perfect conditions for live audio — people were lonely, stuck at home, and craving real-time human connection.

The Origin was designed to be the first purpose-built autonomous vehicle — no steering wheel, no pedals, no compromise. The future just came a little later than we planned.

Being early and being wrong feel exactly the same. The difference only becomes clear in hindsight.

Launching during a crypto winter was not ideal. But the best companies are built when everyone else is leaving.

I built Getir in Istanbul in 2015. Five years before anyone heard the word quick commerce. Being first is not the same as being right.

Roubini has predicted 12 of the last 3 recessions. I have heard the joke. Some of those predictions were early not wrong.

You have to buy things when nobody else wants them.

The time of maximum pessimism is the best time to buy, and the time of maximum optimism is the best time to sell.

The best time to invest in a paradigm shift is when most people think it's stupid.

I made my fortune buying what other people were selling, and selling what other people were buying.

Buy when there's blood in the streets, sell when everyone wants in.

Flickr sold for $25 million to Yahoo. Slack sold for $27.7 billion to Salesforce. Same formula, better timing.

COVID made 10-minute grocery delivery feel essential. Then COVID ended and it felt like a luxury.

The pivot to marketplace came too late. By then, the brand was damaged and the cash was gone.

The model worked during COVID when everyone wanted contactless car buying. Then COVID ended.

We pioneered mRNA. Then watched others make $50 billion from it. Being first doesn't mean being best.

COVID made us essential. Then students went back to classrooms. Online-only edtech lost its urgency.

We built telehealth for 14 years before the world needed it. COVID was our moment.

The best time to invest in a technology company is at the inflection point — when the business model clicks and the market hasn't noticed yet.

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.

The best emerging market trades happen when the politics change and the money hasn't moved yet.

My family controlled 85% of the world's diamonds for a century. Then the market changed. We sold. Timing matters more than sentimentality.

The best time to invest in a startup is before anyone else believes in it. That's where seed investing lives.

When I decide to finish an innings, I know. You need to know when to walk off. In business, in investment, in life — knowing when to exit is the most important skill.

I retired when my body could still perform. I have seen what happens when you stay too long. Dignity in exit is underrated.

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

The best time to sell is when everyone wants to buy from you. That's a lesson most founders learn too late.

Being early is the same as being wrong if your investors don’t have the patience to wait.

Looker saw that every company would need a data layer before data became a buzzword. That’s the kind of timing I look for.

The best deep tech investments look like science fiction for 5 years and then become obvious in year 6.

The best time to buy a bank is when nobody else wants to own one.

The best investments always look dumb at first. If everyone agrees it is smart, you are already too late.

Buy when others are selling. The best brands in the world occasionally go on sale. You just have to be ready.

The question isn't whether autonomous driving will happen. It's whether it'll happen fast enough to justify the billions being spent right now.

The time to buy is when there is blood in the streets, even if some of it is your own.

The best time to buy an airport is when nobody wants to fly. The planes always come back.

Knowing when to sell is harder than knowing when to buy. Most people get that backwards.

The most dangerous position is being right about a stock but wrong about the timing. Technicals tell you when, fundamentals tell you what.

The only stage you should buy in is Stage 2. Any other time you buy, you are guessing.

Building a business requires three things: hard work, correct timing, and the discipline not to be greedy when prices are high.

The most important lesson my father passed on is that the exit is as important as the entry. Knowing when to sell is at least half the skill.

The best venture investments happen before there is any consensus. By the time everyone agrees a company is interesting, it is too late.

We built Cascade when nobody was sure ATM networking would matter. We built Sycamore when everyone was sure fiber optics was the future. Both taught me something different about timing.

I started this company at 53. People thought that was mad. I thought it was exactly the right time.

A crisis is the worst time to be a broker and the best time to start a firm.

At that time, the internet users in Indonesia is only 30 million, 13% of total Indonesia population.

To the extent you find yourself in a position to deploy a lot of your fund in a market that's actually underheated or overly pessimistic relative to progress being made, that's a really nice time to be able to invest.