Building a Successful Startup Is Like Playing Smart Poker

You don’t want to be the gambler. You want to be the grinder.

I’m not what you’d conventionally call a high-risk investor. While everyone is trying to find the next Amazon at 10 cents per share, I’m looking for market inefficiencies that are artificially lowering the price of companies that make and sell the things that everyone needs.

I think this is because I learned about investing at roughly the same time I learned how to play poker. In both pursuits, I quickly realized that I’m not a gambler, I’m a grinder. I’m not looking to cover a bunch of risky losses with one big, risky win. Instead, I bide my time, read the table, build my stake, and wait for that one opportunity where I can strike. Then I take my gains and reload.

This strategy extends to how I operate as an entrepreneur. I like to think of myself as a startup assassin. I don’t build a company to raise a lot of money, establish a crazy valuation, then hope to cash in before it falls over. I build companies around market inefficiencies, and I spend my time seeking out opportunities, not accelerators.

My distaste for risk led to me quit investing in startups, because I just can’t subscribe to the venture capital model of covering 10 losses with one big win. That’s not to…