Data Warehouse Wars, When to Sell, My Cholesterol, & More

The Growth Curve #002

July 22, 2022

Hey Team,

Welcome to The Growth Curve #002 your weekly source for becoming a better long-term investor.

The Growth Curve Portfolio is currently at $66,500. I contributed $1,500 this week and made one purchase. Paid subscribers can see the full portfolio at this link.

Thank you for being here. Consider starting a paid subscription if you’d like to support the newsletter. If you are a student or cannot afford the full price, please email me, and we can work out a temporary discount.

Today’s Topics

Expert Interview: Data Warehouse & Data Lakes: Snowflake and Databricks

Investor Letter: Howard Marks thoughts on selling

Important Trend: The Metaverse with Matthew Ball

Health Tip: My cholesterol is high, some thoughts on lowering it

Leadership Lesson: Retired Four-Star General Stanley McChrystal on why leaders should be listeners first.

Expert Interview

I found this expert interview to be very helpful in understanding the competitive landscape for Snowflake (), Databricks, and others in the data warehouse architectures and data lake markets. It also speaks to the idea that Snowflake is building an “Apple-like ecosystem” with its data warehouse approach which results in better reliability and performance than competitors.

Interview Summary

1. Thinks data warehouse architectures serve a larger potential market than analysis over data lake

2. Believes Databricks is dominant for large-scale AI/ML training

3. In the expert's opinion, the opportunity for data is enormous

I pull these highlights directly from Stream by AlphaSense. Stream’s library of 17,000 expert calls on more than 3,000 companies across all major sectors is used by hedge fund analysts, portfolio managers, and strategic decision-makers to get unique insights and save time. Start your 14 day free trial (no credit card required)

Start your 14-day free trial to access the rest of Stream’s expert interviews (no credit card required).

Investor Letter

Learning from Howard Marks will make you a better investor. An excerpt from his letter on January 13, 2022 “Selling Out.”

Everyone wishes they’d bought Amazon at $5 on the first day of 1998, since it’s now up 660x at $3,304.

This reminds me of the time I once visited Malibu with a friend and mentioned that the Rindge family is said to have bought the entire area – all 13,330 acres – in 1892 for $300,000, or $22.50 per acre. (It’s clearly worth many billions today.) My friend said, “I’d like to have bought all of Malibu for $300,000.” My response was simple: “you would have sold it when it got to $600,000.”

The more I’ve thought about it since writing Liquidity, the more convinced I’ve become that there are two main reasons why people sell investments: because they’re up and because they’re down. You may say that sounds nutty, but what’s really nutty is many investors’ behavior.

Important Trend

This week I bought in The Growth Curve portfolio. There’s obviously a lot of hype around the Metaverse, but I believe it will prove to be one of the most impactful trends of the 2030s.

If you’d like to learn more, I highly recommend reading Matthew Ball’s Primer on the Metaverse and his new book “The Metaverse”. You can find both at this link.

Thank you for reading Growth Curve By Austin Lieberman. This post is public so feel free to share it.

Health Tip

I’m not a doctor, and this isn’t medical advice. But I just had my annual check-up and my cholesterol came in a little high. I consider myself a pretty healthy person. I eat decently healthy and exercise most days of the week.

BUT we’ve had several celebrations/family trips and lately, I’ve been eating more fried food, more take-out, drinking more alcohol, and exercising less. All of these things are factors that increase cholesterol.

Leadership Lesson

Retired Four-Star U.S. Army General, Stanley McChrystal: Listen, Learn, Then Lead

The best leaders are actually willing to listen to and learn from people who may be younger, less experienced and lower on the totem pole than they are.

What I’m Working On

On Tuesday, July 26th I’ll be releasing Part II of my deep dive focused heavily on Reality Labs and the Metaverse opportunity. Subscribe so you don’t miss it! 

Check out my YouTube Channel. This week I released videos on earnings, dividend growth stocks and , and covered a microcap

Thanks for reading. Drop a comment and share your favorite pieces of content so I can feature them in future weeks. Have a great weekend team.

 

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