Non-consensus Investing

Extracted Attributes

• Market Context

  Venture Capital and Equities; often applied to disruptive technology sectors.

• Core Philosophy

  Contrarianism; being right when the market consensus is wrong.

• Key Methodology

  Differentiated point of view on fundamental prospects and intrinsic value; long-term patience.

• Associated Risks

  Brutally hard follow-on capital risks; potential for isolation from market liquidity.

• Primary Objective

  Achieving above-average returns with below-average risks by avoiding losers.

Timeline

• Google is founded and initially viewed as a non-consensus investment opportunity. (Source: Web Search: Martin is right about 'non-consensus')

  1998-01-01

• Palantir is established as a non-consensus play in the data analytics sector. (Source: Web Search: Martin is right about 'non-consensus')

  2003-01-01

• Airbnb is founded, representing a non-consensus bet on the sharing economy. (Source: Web Search: Martin is right about 'non-consensus')

  2008-01-01

• OpenAI is identified as a non-consensus entity prior to the widespread generative AI boom. (Source: Web Search: Martin is right about 'non-consensus')

  2019-01-01

• Andrew Chen of a16z invests in Clubhouse at a $3 billion valuation, a move later debated in the context of consensus vs. non-consensus. (Source: Web Search: Martin is right about 'non-consensus')

  2021-02-01

• Chamath Palihapitiya highlights the $20 billion Groq-Nvidia deal as a validation of non-consensus investing in AI infrastructure. (Source: Document 50cb012b-defb-4e4a-a485-0740769f4098)

  2024-01-01

Consensus (computer science)

A fundamental problem in distributed computing and multi-agent systems is to achieve overall system reliability in the presence of a number of faulty processes. This often requires coordinating processes to reach consensus, or agree on some data value that is needed during computation. Example applications of consensus include agreeing on what transactions to commit to a database in which order, state machine replication, and atomic broadcasts. Real-world applications often requiring consensus include cloud computing, clock synchronization, PageRank, opinion formation, smart power grids, state estimation, control of UAVs (and multiple robots/agents in general), load balancing, blockchain, and others.

Web Search Results

• Non-Consensus Investing

  > Non-Consensus Investing is highly recommended for investors seeking to outperform the market. Focusing on contrarian approaches to investing in equities, an emphasis is placed on risk management and an understanding of the business model of a company. What can go wrong? Be a patient long term investor who can take advantage of excessive pessimism in the short term. Numerous examples are provided of how this approach has been successfully applied. David Kass, University of Maryland [...] > In Non-Consensus Investing, Rupal J. Bhansali provides not only valuable technical insights from her extensive career and methodology of applying active investing principles but also personal guidance for young women aiming to pursue professions in finance. The combination of addressing the myths and hurdles for young women considering finance and her own personal story of overcoming them is very powerful. Amanda Pullinger, ‎Chief Executive Officer, 100 Women in Finance [...] At a time when many proclaim the death of active investing, Rupal J. Bhansali, global contrarian, makes a clarion call for its renaissance. Non-consensus thinking has resulted in breakthrough successes in science, sports, and Silicon Valley. Bhansali shows how to apply it to the world of investing to improve one’s odds of achieving above-average returns with below-average risks. Her upside-down investment approach focuses on avoiding losers instead of picking the winners, asking the right

• Non-Consensus Investing

  market, the more non-consensus your portfolio. The greater the difference versus the benchmark, the more active your portfolio. The greater the disconnect between your thinking and prevailing wisdom, the more contrarian your portfolio. Viewed from that lens, a truly active investor is implicitly, if not explicitly, a nonconsensus thinker and contrarian investor. “The epic battle between passive and active is none other than being a contrarian.” Contrarians defy conventional wisdom by turning [...] it on its head. Throughout this book you will see examples of how nonconsensus investing does things differently if not downright counterintuitively. For instance, instead of being afraid of market volatility, it takes advantage of it. Instead of denigrating the human mind as a source of bias, it leverages its horsepower and willpower to triumph against the odds. Instead of accepting the status quo of being average and getting average returns, it upends prevailing wisdom to secure higher [...] learning and experiences culminated in my unconventional investment discipline: non-consensus investing. Non-consensus investing is not simply doing the opposite of what everyone else is doing. It is deeper and broader and requires its practitioners to develop skills to recognize when widely held investment views are likely to be wrong. It is consciously trying to establish whether you have a differentiated point of view on a company’s fundamental prospects and intrinsic value and then

• I recently published an essay, “Non-Consensus is Dead. ...

  that is an interesting take because like there's these supposed to be like tech investors, Internet investors and yet like consumer and consensus categories include crypto, biodefense. Manufacturing a it's like everything is now in is now like back table. There was an interesting quote in here that I wanted to highlight something about. You can still yes, you can still find non consensus companies within consensus categories, but at some point calling ourselves non consensus investors is just [...] consensus investing is where the alpha is is actually quite dangerous in the early stage. Follow on capital tends to be more and more consensus aligned. For whatever reason, this concept triggered a bunch of investors. We're living in an era where consensus categories like AI, crypto, robotics, biodefense, autonomous systems, manufacturing are big enough to carry entire generations of startups. You don't need to invent a new category to generate massive outcomes. And that is an interesting, [...] This weekend, says Jeff Morris junior Martin Casado dropped a tweet that took over VC Twitter. I wrote about it and what being consensus versus non consensus actually means in today's market. Every weekend there's a new hero, says JMJ, that takes over venture Capital Group chats. This past weekend was clearly slow on the news front because what I initially read is a fairly standard take ended up dominating my timeline. This is we talked about this, Martin Casado said. The idea that non

• Martin is right about "non-consensus" - by Yoni Rechtman

  This is totally true! It’s true that investing truly outside the consensus creates brutally hard follow-on capital risks (to be non-consensus you may need to be big enough to take stuff all the way yourself). And it’s also true that markets are increasingly efficient, which means if you’re consensus you’re probably wrong. It is extremely rare to the sole bidder for genuinely good things. If you can’t acknowledge those risks, you certainly don’t have the stomach to take them! [...] > I'm much less interested in whether consensus based investing works. And much more interested in the dangers of being non consensus […] > > I actually believe the following two statements are roughly true (a) VC consensus is often hype driven and totally disconnected from markets (b) early markets are efficient and therefore good deals get identified early and that's reflected in marks. In other words, deal hunting is the wrong approach in VC [...] As Miles Dieffenbach pointed out, OpenAI was non consensus in 2019, Google non consensus in 1998, Airbnb non consensus in 2008, Palantir non consensus in 2003. The list goes on but the point is obvious and clear. It’s also worth noting that this is the exact same thing a16z partner Andrew Chen said in Feb 2021, around the same time he invested in Clubhouse at $3B. Then as now the signs are signing.

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  Most investors can access some alternative investment strategies. Non-traditional mutual funds employ alternative investment approaches and can be bought and sold by nearly all investors. Other Alternative Investments may have specific investor qualifications, including requirements for specific levels of net worth or investable assets as well as investment experience. These requirements depend on the investment strategy and should be carefully evaluated before investing. [...] tolerance for risk. Alternative investments are speculative and involve a high degree of risk. [...] one of the best ways to determine if Alternative Investments are right for you.