“Those who do not remember their past are condemned to repeat their mistakes.” – George Santayana
My greatest lesson learned was from an investor’s classic, “The Intelligent Investor”, written by Benjamin Graham — later editted by Jason Zweig. The importance of the lesson did not lie from the ‘someone else’, instead, it was the meaning derived. An intellectual by the name of George Santayana noted, “Those who do not remember their past are condemned to repeat their mistakes.”
Graham (and Zweig) relates this quote to the ethical, responsible, and psychological approach to investing in the capital markets. If one does not acknowledge the past (market), it is inevitable that they will hit the brick wall once again — both psychologically and financially.
This lesson was interpreted differently, to some extent, by me. It brings the concept of failure to a different perspective: the past is what grows us. Given we learn from what we failed at, we are bound to have a visible improvement. Recalling my first COMM299 post, my team and I won the Venture Capital and Private Equity Competition.
During the second round, my team, Top Guns Capital, were given extremely limited time to prepare analyses, valuations, and recommendations to various e-teams (entrepreneurs). However, we managed to get through it. It being the longest 10 minutes of Q&A: one question drilled after another.
At the end, however, industry professionals provided clear suggestions on how to improve our valuations and models. As a result of their recommendations, as mentioned, we won the competition. If we had not learned from the things we missed out during round two, we quite likely might not have survived the second longest 10 minutes of Q&A during the finals.
What can I say, the past is critical to understanding the success of the future.
