Powerful Lesson That Influenced a young Patrick Collison (Founder of Stripe)

Nugget by Patrick Collison

Hey friend!

In today’s letter I share with you a lesson that Patrick Collison (founder of Stripe) learned the hard way (by making the mistake).

He said it was a “powerful learning experience”, and I learned a lot from it! So I think you will also find it super valuable.

“Learning from other people's mistakes is the best way to learn.” - Jensen Huang

👤 Doers

💡Nugget

🟠 Patrick Collison:

I remember when the Bitcoin paper came out, I stumbled upon it, and, this is back in 2010, it was fall of 2010. And I was like, man, this is super interesting and could be really important. And so I held a Bitcoin meetup in Palo Alto. And invited a bunch of folks. And I spent about 100$ - 150$ on buying food for that meetup. And if I'd invested the 100 or 150 in Bitcoin, that would have been a much better financial decision. I did not, in fact, buy any Bitcoin.

But that mistake really stuck with me because, because it seemed pretty stupid, right? If I hadn't heard of Bitcoin, you know, back in 2010, entirely forgivable, right? And if I had heard of Bitcoin but thought the idea was stupid, you know, that might have been a misjudgment, but it was also kind of forgivable. But I made the worst mistake... where I had heard of Bitcoin, I had thought it was a good idea, and then I just hadn't done anything. And I kind of really tried to reflect on sort of why that was. And I think at root why it was... was because it seemed like a weird, a weird thing. It just like didn't fit the existing model of the world.

And so even though my logic led me to think it was a good idea, it just seemed too strange.

And again, any rationale as “well, but it's so asymmetric…” But I think somehow we are so subconsciously, maybe even consciously, predisposed to not look stupid... That we make these quite irrational decisions.

"Show me a person who’s afraid to look bad, and I’ll show you a person you can beat every time."

- Lou Brock


"Brilliant thinking is rare, but courage is in even shorter supply than genius."

- Peter Thiel

And again, most of you here are probably much less susceptible to this than most people. And certainly I know that I'm like a pretty disagreeable person. I feel uncomfortable when I'm in the majority…

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."

- Mark Twain

And yet, evidently, even I was like extremely subject to this.

So in that sense, it was kind of a powerful learning experience.

👉 Video Source - Reid Hoffman & Patrick Collison Fireside Chat

Now, considering Patrick's phenomenal track record ever since that mistake, it's clear he never forgot that lesson!

"Forgetting your mistakes is a terrible error if you are trying to improve your cognition."
- Charlie Munger (Patrick’s company Stripe actually published the digital version of "Poor Charlie’s Almanack" — arguably the best book written about Charlie)

💥 Stuff I Loved

📁 All insights in this letter are saved and classified in a searchable Database, which (as of September 2024) contains more than 2.4K timeless insights (sourced directly from the most influential people in the world)

I call it the “Doers Notebook” and I’ve recently opened it for anyone who wants it.

🤔 Why did I build this?

Well, as the Latin motto goes, “A chief part of learning is simply knowing where you can find a thing.” And since it’s all 🔎 searchable, we only need to type a keyword to immediately get a list of insights related to it!

For instance, if I’m unsure about how to get more sales in my business, I can simply type the word “sales” and immediately get 88 search results! In this case from Jim Edwards, Peter Thiel, Naval Ravikant, Paul Graham, Sam Altman, Balaji Srinivasan, Nassim Taleb, and many other remarkable individuals!

It’s like having a 🧠 second brain from which we can pull wisdom on demand.

And this is extremely valuable because it can significantly decrease the error rate in our judgment.

“In an age of infinite leverage [code and media], judgment is the most important skill.”

- Naval Ravikant

I actually made a video where I go through the list of insights i got for the keywords “sales” and “creative”.

So, if you wanna get better at sales or learn to be more creative (and also see all the features of the database and how you can get access) then definitely check out the video 👇

I hope you enjoyed today’s edition!

Happy Friday ;)

Julio xx