“I very frequently get the question: “What’s going to change in the next 10 years?” That’s a very interesting question.

I almost never get the question: “What’s not going to change in the next 10 years?” And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two.

You can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time. In our retail business, we know that customers want low prices, and I know that’s going to be true 10 years from now. They want fast delivery; they want vast selection. It’s impossible to imagine a future 10 years from now where a customer comes up and says, “Jeff I love Amazon, I just wish the prices were a little higher.” Or, “I love Amazon, I just wish you’d deliver a little slower.” Impossible.”

“Think forwards and backwards — invert, always invert.” “Many hard problems are best solved when they are addressed backward.” “The way complex adaptive systems work and the way mental constructs work is that problems frequently get easier, I’d even say usually are easier to solve, if you turn them around in reverse. In other words, if you want to help India, the question you should ask is not “how can I help India,” it’s “what is doing the worst damage in India? What will automatically do the worst damage and how do I avoid it?” “Figure out what you don’t want and avoid it and you’ll get what you do want. How can you best get what you want? The answer: Deserve what you want! How can it be any other way?”

“We’ve essentially hit the read and write or “read/write” stage of biology — because we can now read biology more comprehensively with more lenses and higher resolution, we can also increasingly write to biology. We can increasingly program biological systems, whether it’s gene editing with CRISPR or with various genetic engineering tools that have been refined over time. But as Vijay framed it earlier, when you make something an engineering problem vs. a science problem, then you can industrialize a lot of these processes to do them at higher throughput, higher resolution, better costs, and higher quality… basically at scale with high precision.”

We are experiencing a frenetic time. I rarely talk to any startup entrepreneur or VC who doesn’t feel it and somehow long for simpler times despite the benefits we all enjoy from increased enthusiasm…

I would not recommend anyone assume the next round is going to materialize, even from insiders. Many big VCs won’t say this publicly, but behind closed doors, they view the majority of the seed-stage as little league. Yes, they pay attention to what certain seed-stage companies and a few investors do — but on the whole, they’re highly skeptical of current market conditions and expect seeded startups with a few million and time runway to have already positioned their company to shine in terms of (a), (b), and ©. And, they will happily wait a year or two until they find that company before deploying $5M+ checks.

“28,853 companies traded on U.S. stock market from 1950-2009. Almost 80% of those companies (22,469) were gone by 2009 (through buyouts, mergers, failure, etc.)

Fewer than 5% of companies remain over rolling 30 year periods.

The risk of a company dying does not depend on its age or size as the probability of a 5-year-old company that dies before turning 6 is the same as that of a 50-year-old company reaching age 51.

The estimated half-life of U.S. publicly traded companies was 10.5, meaning half of all companies that go public in any given year will be gone in 10.5 years.

There was just a 12 percent survival rate for the firms on the Fortune 500 list in 1955.”

“Only 4 percent of all publicly traded stocks account for all of the net wealth earned by investors in the stock market since 1926, he has found. A mere 30 stocks account for 30 percent of the net wealth generated by stocks in that long period, and 50 stocks account for 40 percent of the net wealth.”

My friend from Goldman Sachs has created their Q4 economic review. Check it out!

REITs declined nearly 3% this week, dragged down by a 5% plunge in shopping center REITs. The Toys R Us bankruptcy reignited fears of the retail apocalypse. Cel

‘For many it does not make sense to sell,’ Zillow’s top real estate analyst explains, and here’s why.

After two straight years of gains, the rate of home flipping flattened in the second quarter of this year.

A start-up in Seattle will lend money to home buyers who promise to make a room available for rent continuously for up to three years.

It’s no secret that tech hubs like San Jose and Seattle are home to some of the highest-paying tech jobs in the country — but a new report shows just how stark the economic divide is between tech hubs and the rest of the country.

California Gov. Jerry Brown has finalized lawmakers’ most robust response to California’s housing affordability problems in recent memory.

California’s 50-year-old housing supply law has failed to help prevent the shortage at the root of the state’s affordability crisis.

The chairman and co-chief investment officer of Bridgewater Associates introduces his new book, “Principles: Life and Work.“