It was almost 2 years ago, I e-mailed Saurabh whether he was willing to come on a live webinar to discuss about his new book and interact with members of Beta to Alpha.
To my surprise, he gladly said yes.
Now, it is no surprise that my love for investing started when I read the books - The Unusual Billionaires, Coffee Can Investing, Gurus of Chaos and The Victory Project.
It started with the Unusual Billionaires and then if I had to read an author that wrote books on Investing from an Indian context, it was Saurabh and hence all the books.
So, why am I narrating this story and what is the context of First Principles Thinking?
Well, it is about using ‘starting from scratch’ when it comes to thinking.
You see, ever since a very young age we have always been told - do this, do that and what not.
In fact, our entire education system is built on the foundation of learn and assess.
20 years later when someone really enters the real life, they suddenly find themselves unlearning and readjusting.
More than starting from scratch, it is also about doing ‘Original Thinking’
Let us take an example.
The popular wisdom on rent vs. buy when it comes to our own personal house to live in has always been to buy the house - despite the fact that renting a house is so much more better, economical, flexible and makes complete sense financially
But does anyone really make an effort to do a rent vs buy exercise before buying a house?
You would be surprised when I ask people about this their response has always ranged from - ‘OMG, you have to buy a house, what option is there?’ to even something as crazy as ‘What do you mean there is an option for renting?’
When I started writing online almost 3 years ago, little did I know that a forensic work on a hot favourite company on Dalal Street to a praise-worthy blog on a company with impeccable track record would help me get attention of fund managers managing anywhere close to USD 2 to 10 billion dollars of AUM in Indian equities.
Did I think of this as a First Principle process?
No, this is loaded with massive hindsight bias.
Well, if you have not seen this conversation before, you can tune in, and see a lot of these questions getting answered in a free flowing QnA after Saurabh and Anupam’s presentation - all the way from First Principles Thinking to effective hacks on reading and taking notes.