What I Taught Myself about Business and Investment

What I taught myself about business and investment.

I grew up in a family devoted to the non-profit sector. Folks in the non-profit sector tend to think of folks in the commercial and government sectors as lacking a taste for the finer things in life - a bunch of loony zombies that amuse the rest of us with their grandiose competitions and braggadocio. So within that domain of prejudice, I was taught generally that business and investment were offensive mechanisms, which are used to take.

Having managed, by hook and crook, to get into college on scholarship, I took great care to avoid commercial studies ... not because they were bad, but because they were lowly. I had a bunch of very important things to figure out before beginning to study commerce. To this day, I find that the best things in life are things you do to yourself at the meta-programming level - which money doesn't easily help with. Most people wouldn't know what to shop for, let alone where to shop for it.

On schedule, once I got out of school, I launched myself into government and commercial studies. I did this in Malaysia, because I thought I already understood everything else about that country, so I needed to close the loop and acquire the last two lenses. Malaysia in 2005 was a low-sophistication market ... there really weren't many interesting goings-on here. ( In 2024, I'm told it's still a low-sophistication market, but I don't currently do business here, so I have no comment on that at this time. ) I was twenty-two.

By twenty-four, I had bailed out of a think tank, a management consulting firm, and an investment bank, and started looking for work with startups. By twenty-eight, I was making decent money in technology, about 17x minimum wage - even though my core skills were people oriented, I had focused on acquiring software development skills in order to balance myself a little. ( It wasn't entirely alien to me, as I had done some computing studies until I was fourteen, before focusing on math, science, and the history of ideas. )

I finally managed to take two-thirds of a year off, just for studies, when I was twenty-nine. I also doubled my money trading AAPL call warrants, but felt that I would never get enough life experience if I started having too much money, so I burnt the money, and went back to employment in another startup when I was thirty. The year I was thirty-one, I worked four jobs in sequence rebuilding my wage from near-minimum to 10x minimum wage. ( It was pretty much the same as what I made before, but the minimum wage had gone up, over time. )

Then when I was thirty-two, I raised some money and became the managing partner of my first business venture. At this time, I understood people very well, but I still hadn't much hands-on commercial experience, so it was the best thing to do. I did the job until I was thirty-seven, spent a couple of days in jail and used that as an excuse to roll up the joint. ( It wasn't exactly jail, just the local police lockup a hundred meters from the hipster cafes ... but in 2020 Malaysia, those still had you strip naked, change into scrubs without shoes, and share a cell with five other guys ... where all of you shared one squat-toilet, one tap, and one bucket ... with only bars between remandees and the duty officer. )

Then I worked simultaneously in two corporate jobs, until I was forty. Then it was time for a second proper sabbatical. During this periods I actually had savings ... so it was a great time to get back into investment.

Now, after a couple of years of struggling to brain tactical asset allocation, I consider investment a defensive mechanism. Of course, it is defense by way of offense - so it enriched the worldview I was taught as a child.