Weekend Edition – Fear and Greed

I was traveling for much of this week and was able to connect with and see a lot of interesting people. While attending a ‘CEO Summit’ in New York City, I was able to connect with other CEOs, Venture Capitalists (VCs) and private equity types, as well as industry professionals like bankers, lawyers and accountants who can bring great perspective from both sides of the table. It was a great bunch of people doing interesting things, which creates a life sized, social Petri dish. It is always fascinating in those environments to see what grows, usually it’s relationships, the best kind of growth.

The event was a very well run, hosted in NYC’s vibrant Soho district and featured speakers of all types – first time entrepreneurs / CEOs, early and mid stage entrepreneurs who are on their 2nd, 3rd or 4th companies, entrepreneurs turned academics, data scientists, investors, successful entrepreneurs and even a few grizzled, successful entrepreneurs who had, at times, been unsuccessful. One thing that resonated with me, and as you know me–I can’t help but look at everything through the lens of an “investor”–was how two, raw, human emotions dominated the discussions – fear and greed.

Every presenter’s ideas, when distilled down to the one most dominant human emotion illicited, could have been bucketed as “fear or greed.”

Being Fearful Reminds Us of Downside Risk – That’s A Good Thing

For example, a presenter from a data firm shed light on the VC community and discussed the so-called tech-bubble we’re in. His stats seem to indicate that the quantity of “unicorns” (mythical, exceptionally hard to spot creatures), which had previously been defined a