Warren Buffett

“I don’t want to buy any stock where if they closed the New York Stock Exchange for five years, I won’t be happy owning it. I buy a farm and I don’t get a quote on it for five years, I’m happy if the farm does okay. I buy an apartment house, don’t get a quote on it for five years, I’m happy if the apartment house produces the returns that I expect. But people buy a stock and they look at the price the next morning and they decide whether they are doing well or not doing well. It’s crazy because they’re buying a piece of a business. That’s what Graham most fundamentally taught me. You’re buying a part ownership in the business. You will do well if the business does well if you didn’t pay a totally silly price. And that’s what it’s all about.” – Warren Buffett talk to University of Florida MBA students

Buffett is an obvious choice for any list of influential investors with good reason. He’s well-known for investing success over the past century, folksy business platitudes and homespun annual shareholder letters. What makes Buffett so remarkable is that he has maintained his convictions over decades where the rest of the financial industry has moved further away from his line of thinking. With the proliferation of technology, the investing community is prone to over-think its collective actions. The regular person is oversold on the concept that financial professionals are that much more knowledgeable than them.

Buffett has derided the financial establishment for these actions. In its place, he has espoused the timeless basics to business: Make more money than you spend. He says, “I am a better investor because I am a businessman and a better businessman because I am an investor.” As an business owner, his job is to run businesses in the preceding manner. As an investor, his job is to find businesses run that way. It’s slightly more complicated than that, but not by much. In this day and age, it feels harder to find than it should.

If more people in business followed his thinking, the economy and society at large would be a much more prosperous place.

Jim Cramer

“I’m not trying to tell you what to buy or sell like an automaton on my show. I’m trying to give you investment ideas and trying to help you understand how I come up with my conclusions so you can do the same.” – Jim Cramer on Mad Money: Know Thyself

Jim Cramer sparked my interest in finance. I came home from school one day to find my dad watching his show. His energy is compelling to youngsters and those unfamiliar with the stock market. His ability to break down financial terminology into layman’s terms is valuable to anyone needing to learn more about how the stock market works.

There are criticisms that his glamorization of the market masks the underlying work to watcher at home and people are prone to blindly following his recommendations. I tend to not hold this against him personally so much as holding it against the format of his show (where having to make money-making recommendations on a daily basis is bound to fail) and naive viewers.

What sealed my respect for Cramer is when I got to meet him at Ohio State. He visited campus to shoot an episode of his “Mad Money” show and speak to a select group of students. Two events happened in his one day on campus:

First, during the midday one-hour session with 50 business school students, I got to directly ask Cramer a question. I asked, in the spring of 2009, if he believed there was a threat of another round of mortgage defaults and further declines in housing prices. He gave a surprisingly detailed, ten-minute answer citing technical metrics used by Bank of America to determine what and how many loans may be at risk and when a market bottom could be found. I was impressed that he did not give a flippant five second answer and showed the in-depth expertise which presumably served him well when he was an active fund manager.

Second, during the filming of his show, he continued to make references to some famous actor whose name I forget. It was a widely recognizable name. During the commercial breaks, when talking about his previous segment to the audience while his stage crew rearranged the set, Cramer continually butchered the name of a seemingly popular celebrity. I don’t remember the exact name, but I remember the feeling that Cramer spent more time researching the stocks to be discussed on his show than any of the soundboard, props, or pop-culture references that go into the script. This reinforcement of his knowledge domain reassured me that he was a great entry point into the financial industry.

Russ Roberts

“You are going to see in a healthy dynamic economy–and I would argue probably the most innovative economy in the world–you are going to see large winners emerge. Those emerge for two reasons, one of which is they are really good at making a lot of people happy. That would be Lebron James and Sergei Brin and others who entertain us and educate us and divert us. Then there are some people that you describe as doing rent seeking–they are taking money from the rest of us using the power of government. A lot of those are in the financial sector, and those I would say are bad ways that the top gets wealthy.” – Russ Roberts Econtalk with Joseph Stiglitz

“I think economics still has a lot to offer. I think economics as practiced by most of the profession in the public eye is full of hubris and should be much more full of humility…. He [Joseph Stiglitz] could be right. He could certainly provide some evidence that he is right, some fancy statistical analysis. And the people who think he is wrong could provide some fancy statistical analysis. Since they can’t convince each other of either viewpoint, it suggests to me that that statistical evidence is not so scientific. He falls into the realm of what Hayek called ‘scientism’. Fake science. I think it’s hard to argue logically that spending money unwisely is the way to get wealthy.” – Russ Roberts on Reason.com

Russ Roberts is the best economist today, perhaps not by the standards of breakthrough research, but due to his trend-setting and prophetic actions in using the Internet to popularize economic thought. In 2006, he launched his weekly economics podcast EconTalk. I have been a listener (I forget exactly how I found it, but I believe it was recommended on the business section of iTunes) from the beginning and, seven years later, still follow every episode.

He is an Austrian School-influenced economist who formerly taught at George Mason University before recently spending more time at Stanford’s Hoover Institute. Roberts has made the biggest impression on my economic views in three vitally important ways:

1. He is very willing to admit he does not know something.
2. He leaves open the possibility that those who disagree with him may be right.
3. He is willing to question the status quo in a public format.
4. He asks more questions than he tries to answer.

There are not many economists who openly advocate that their positions as tenured professors will come to an end in the future due to an understanding of technology’s ability to deliver cheap education alternatives. Not many used this technology in its infancy, near the birth of iTunes podcasting, to spread economic knowledge. Russ Roberts did. Not many used their wide-reaching digital podium to critique mainstream Keynesian economists such as Joseph Stiglitz (who has also been a guest on his show, and a nice one at that) and Paul Krugman (mysteriously absent from EconTalk). Russ Roberts does.

And he tweeted me:

https://twitter.com/SaadAlAdwani/status/171021708692701184

Fischer Black

“I have had no formal training in economics or finance. I do not fully understand some of the tools and concepts used by those who have had that training. Sometimes I think I’m close, but then they slip away. I question many conventions in economic research; but in some cases it’s just that I don’t fully understand them….As a result, I make errors, both small and large. I don’t like errors, and I’d appreciate help in finding them.” – Introduction to Black’s textbook Exploring General Equilibrium.

“No one’s mind is, or will ever be, as fertile as Fischer’s was. No one is even close. He was crazy and logical at the same time. The force of his logic would push you into corners you didn’t like, or it could open vistas you had not imagined. The crazy streak freed him from conventional wisdom. He was intellectually fearless.” – Friend Hans Stoll in a letter Fischer’s father.

In the words of MIT finance professor John Cox: “Fischer is the only real genius I’ve ever met in finance. Other people, like Robert Merton or Stephen Ross, are just very smart and quick, but they think like me. Fischer came from someplace else entirely.”

I recommend to anyone, regardless of their interest in finance, to read Perry Mehrling’s engaging biography of Fischer Black to get insight into how a genius works.

His paper outlining the Black-Scholes options pricing formula won the Nobel Prize for his coauthor years after Fischer’s death, allegedly because the Nobel committee frowned upon the fact that Fischer had spent much of his career as a non-academic consultant and partner at Goldman Sachs, and thus did not want to give him the planet’s highest academic prize. To bankers and traders, he resided in an ivory tower. To academics, he was a businessman overly concerned with the practicality of ideas disregarding traditional research processes. Fischer ignored both of these groups by happily accepting fewer shares in the Goldman partnership than any other partner and partnering with other traditional professors to translate his ideas into academically-acceptable papers.

Fischer, more than anyone in modern financial research, pursued usable new knowledge for the sole purpose of it being what he enjoyed. Tales of him playing Super Mario Bros. in his office during the day and going to see Gallagher at night show the childlike innocence he brought to the financial community and its research. His simple writing and speech patterns were purposefully designed to cut through to the heart of matters that are so often, in his worlds, clouded by business or academic jargon.

His phrase, “More efficient capital is more capital,” is one of his many simple, yet profound statements. In a world which looks for silver bullets, Fischer understood progress can come from modifying current methods to be a small step better. In doing so, Fischer made great leaps in business, finance, academia, and for anyone looking to pursue their passions.

In 2008, Paul Graham wrote an essay titled “Some Heroes” listing those who have influenced him and how they did it. His reasoning for writing this particular essay was because it’d “be so much fun to write about.”

While I respect his motivation, I suspect the essay had more relevance to him than he let on. He adds: “ I once asked a physicist friend if Einstein was really as smart as his fame implies, and she said that yes, he was. So why isn’t he on the list? Because I had to ask. This is a list of people who’ve influenced me, not people who would have if I understood their work.” [emphasis mine]

The people who influence us are more than just heroes. This is arguing over syntax, but heroes could be observed from afar. The word “influencer” has an intimate connotation, one implying someone has directly touched your life.

While reading Graham’s list, I couldn’t help myself from generating my own list. And due to Graham’s use of the word “influence” in his reasoning for rejecting Einstein, I began generating a list not of heroes, but of influencers.

As I was compiling the names, one major criteria gave me pause: My age when I encountered a person’s work. I have no background in the sociology or neuroscience, so I am inclined to believe the adage that we get stuck in our ways as we age. I greatly admire Richard Feynman work, but because I discovered him later in life (sophomore year of college when I was 19), my world views had already been set. I admire him, yet his influence on me is minimal.

Additionally, I found that I could compartmentalize sections of my life into themes. The influences for each of these areas of my life are grouped below.

To summarize my approach in selecting the names for this list: These are the individuals who, during my formative years, shaped my perspectives and/or abilities (excluding family members, who are influences by default).

At the end of the list, there is a short summary where I identify patterns among my influences.

---

Technology:

John Carmack:

“I was sort of an amoral little jerk when I was young. I was arrogant about being smarter than other people, but unhappy that I wasn’t able to spend all my time doing what I wanted. I spent a year in a juvenile home for a first offense after an evaluation by a psychologist went very badly.” – John Carmack’s Slashdot Q&A

“In the information age, the barriers just aren’t there. The barriers are self-imposed. If you want to set off and go develop some grand new thing, you don’t need millions of dollars of capitalization. You need enough pizza and Diet Coke to stick in your refrigerator, a cheap PC to work on, and the dedication to go through with it. We slept on floors. We waded across rivers.”- John Carmack in Masters of Doom

“There are lots of brilliant people that come up with lots of creative things, and nothing that I’ve done changed the world in a way that somebody else wouldn’t have, it might just have taken several more years. But if that’s what I’ve brought to the table on any of this – bringing the future a little bit closer for the segment of the population that wants it – I’m proud of that, and happy to have given that experience to a lot of people. But I just turned 40 and I can be programming for another 40 years; there’s a lot yet to do!” – Carmack interview with NowGamer

When I decided to write this essay, John Carmack was the only name that really mattered. If it was shortened to one name, it’d be his. He is the most influential, non-friend-or-relative in my life. I read David Kushner’s biography of Carmack when I was 14 and it instantly, fundamentally changed my life perspective.

The feeling is hard to describe. When we are teenagers, the world starts to open up and becomes larger than we previously knew. It’s also a time when we start to develop our own sense of what we like and dislike. We can self-select our turn-ons without guidance from family.

Carmack was relatable in a way I had never experienced. Throughout middle school, I was already getting bored with monotony of school life and was luckily gifted enough to glide through classes with minimal effort. Yet, at that age, there weren’t many other students around who were as actively antsy about the lack of motivation in school and autodidactic enough to find external interests that, again, weren’t managed by parents.

Carmack, through Kushner’s writing, shone through as someone who had faced the same internal conflicts 15 years before me and solved them with such directed intelligence and single-minded drive that I realized I could never obtain, but very much desired.

I became a self-taught programmer because of Carmack. As a naive high school senior, I expected to drop out of Ohio State my freshman year to program full-time because Carmack had blazed a recent trail for those young kids who hated the restrictiveness of educational institutions. When founding his company with his partners, he never accepted venture capital and gave away software for free. For my generation of technologists, Carmack embodied the hacker ethic.

Carmack created the first-person shooter genre. His individual output can dwarf teams of intelligent programmers. He’s a part-time rocket scientist. He is on Bill Gates’s short list of geniuses. After Apple, id Software became the poster boy for rockstar technology companies, bridging the gap between the personal computers of the 80s and internet bubble of the late 90s, and having technical chops surpassing almost all of those who preceded and succeeded him.

My ideals are largely a reflection of Carmack’s: Singular dedication and love for your craft and having the stubbornness to not allow for distractions. Very few people have reached Carmack’s intellectual purity. I certainly haven’t, but it gives me something to strive toward daily.

Paul Graham:

“Programming should be fun. Programs should be beautiful. That’s the spirit I have tried to convey.”

“Live in the future, then build what’s missing.” – Paul Graham

While John Carmack is my biggest influence, Paul Graham is the person I cite the most. Perhaps next to the Google guys, Paul Graham has done more than anyone to promote the internet as a significant economic force and startups as the physical manifestation of that force. Through his prescient writings, he has established himself as the philosopher behind the Internet revolution.

PG spent his early life pursuing his interest in computers while also entertaining his intellectual curiousity with a major in philosophy at Cornell. After receiving a Phd in Computer Science from Harvard and a stint as a painting student in Florence, Graham and his friend Robert Morris built a pioneering web-based startup which sold to Yahoo for just shy of $50 million. With a sizable amount of money burning a hole in his pocket and a curious mind, he institutionalized angel investing with a new structure (YCombinator) which obsoleted traditional startup “incubators”.

What I find particularly inspiring and humbling is how PG’s career seems to be an odd combination of simultaneous forethought and luck. The concept of “awareness” might be an intersection of these two traits: Finding yourself in situations and having the presence of a prepared mind to understand your surroundings Based on his programming background, his preference for the programming language Lisp, a desire to control his application stack, and the ability to write software faster, he stumbled into web businesses at their incubation stage. In the aftermath of the Internet bubble, the costs of running a software company had decreased significantly while the web was still in its infancy. This soil, along with his newfound wealth, was fertile ground for the next evolution in startup financing.

While I don’t agree with him on everything, his writing styles blends concise points and illustrative metaphors into convincing arguments. If more non-fiction writers had as gifted a pen, more people would spend their leisure on intellectual pursuits.

Paul Graham’s legacy will be as the personification of the technology business in the mid-2000s. Hopefully it will continue to grow in the coming decades.

As I planned my first blog post since 2008, I was thinking over what would be different this time around from my eight month blogging stint five years earlier when I wrote for friends in high school.

Here’s the difference: In 2008, as a senior in high school, I was naive and just barely educated enough to think that I could, with enough analysis, answer any question. Time teaches you the world isn’t that simple.

This blogging reboot is meant to be a lot more fun for myself as a writer and any readers. In this spirit, here are three of my favorite, seemingly disparate examples of enjoying what you do.

---

I’ve never been a huge sports fan, but I always appreciate a good sports montage. In 2010, NFL Films put together a 10-hour video series highlighting the Top 100 NFL Players of All Time. I had no idea how high-quality NFL Films productions were until I saw this list, which plays like and has the emotional and intellectual impact of a sports-based TED talk.

Coming in at number twenty was famous Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre. Years later, his four-minute highlight reel still resonates.

“Watch him play the game. Watch how Brett plays sports…When he throws a touchdown, he goes and jumps on the guys, and he’s celebrating, and he has fun. That’s the way sport is supposed to be played. It’s not always serious stuff, even in pro football. He’s having a ball, even at practice. That’s what you ought to be like.” – Steve Mariucci

Second, since graduating school, moving to a new city, and getting a new job, the scariest part of it all was having to cook for myself. It’s not scary due to difficulty. I just hate taking the time out of my day when I could be working on something else. However, I like saving money even more. In an attempt to cultivate my culinary knowledge, I bought Jeff Potter’s Cooking for Geeks used from Amazon. Inside, in an interview with Lydia Walshin of The Perfect Pantry, I found this quote:

“Q: Why do you think there is a fear of cooking?

A: Honestly, I see this more in younger people, people in their 20s and 30s. I think our entire way of raising kids, educating kids, all of the pressures that we read about to succeed, and whatever punishment there seems to be for failure, seems to have translated to the kitchen….I think that’s really kind of sad…. We have come to take cooking too seriously. We’ve come to take ourselves too seriously.

For me, once it stops being fun, I’m going to give it up, because i really do think that you should have a good time in the kitchen. I think you should make a mess in the kitchen. I think you should put some things down the disposal if nobody really should eat them, and then you should go out for pizza, and it’s all okay. We don’t let it be okay anymore. That’s me.”

Lastly, one of my favorite computer scientists, Paul Graham, starts his textbook ANSI Common Lisp with:

“Donald Knuth called his classic series ‘The Art of Computer Programming’. In his Turing Award Lecture, he explained that this title was a conscious choice–that what drew him to programming was ‘the possibility of writing beautiful programs.’

Many programmers feel, like Donald Knuth, that this is also the real aim of programming…. Programming should be fun. Programs should be beautiful. That’s the spirit I have tried to convey….”

These are a few examples of people who are passionate about what they do. This blog will feature ideas I am passionate about. I hope you have fun reading.