The Curious Engineer

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Investing 101

investing101.substack.com

Learning in Public: Investing. Click to read Investing 101, by Kyle Harrison, a Substack publication with tens of thousands of subscribers.

Essays / personalSociety / politics / economy

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261 from 8 Jul 2020 to 28 Oct 2026
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weekly (59 in the last year)
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2026 50

  1. What Happens To The AI Trade When Everything Gets Cheaper?
  2. The Forgotten Industrialist
  3. Making Stuff Up 2.0
  4. The Death of Venture Capital’s Short Kings
  5. The Virtue of an Artificial Intelligence
  6. Sailing Tailwinds
  7. The Mega-Million Dollar Customer
  8. How I Write
  9. Dynasties Die In The Dark
  10. Humility Hard Hats
  11. Getting In The Right Rooms
  12. The Unfalsifiable Economy
  13. We Made Bell Labs Illegal
  14. A Global Weighing Machine
  15. Consider The Lillies
  16. Capital Allocation Is Dead
  17. Rat's Nest Problems
  18. An American Redemption
  19. The Bifurcation of Capital is Inevitable
  20. Every Moat Becomes Moot
  21. The Magic of World Building
  22. Venture Capital's Fourth Turning
  23. Family Towns
  24. The Internet Wants Me Dead
  25. Read Old Books
  26. What Do You Have To Believe?
  27. The Anduril Thesis
  28. Revisiting The Outcome Distortion Complex
  29. "Anxiously Engaged in a Good Cause"
  30. Networked Conviction 006
  31. Know Thyself
  32. The $1B Rorschach Test
  33. The Techno-Solutionist Commitment
  34. The Great Circle of Life
  35. Venture Capital Doesn't Exist
  36. Networked Conviction 005
  37. Hijacking The Huckster's Hypebook
  38. Dr. Tokens or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the AI Bubble
  39. Legible To Yourself
  40. AI Rollups That Don't Suck
  41. The Self-Own of Doubt
  42. The Incompetent Confidence Complex
  43. Networked Conviction 003
  44. Revisiting Clarity of Thought
  45. Saying The Quiet Part Out Loud
  46. Networked Conviction 002
  47. We Need a Renaissance of Rhetoric
  48. Networked Conviction 001
  49. Becoming a Cult Leader
  50. Investing 101

2025 52

  1. Having a Conversation With Myself: 2025
  2. 2025 in Books
  3. "You Sit on a Throne of Lies"
  4. Complaining Is The Mind Killer
  5. Tell Better Stories
  6. Do Nothing & Do Everything
  7. “Build What’s Fundable”
  8. Founder Ideology
  9. Everything I Own
  10. My Style of Panic Writing
  11. Momentum != Moat
  12. Why Bother?
  13. A Latticework of Knowledge
  14. In Defense of Disney
  15. Conviction Capitalists
  16. The Ethos of Nuance
  17. Wearing Fiduciary Hats
  18. What Is An Extraordinary Man?
  19. I Wish I Knew How To Quit Roam Research
  20. Have Kids. Or Don't. But Have Kids.
  21. Chips For America
  22. The Cogsec Chronicles
  23. Be Still
  24. Seek Sunlight
  25. The Holding Companies of Our Hearts
  26. An American Optimism
  27. VCs Beyond The Meme
  28. A Fungible Worldview
  29. The Burden of Proof
  30. Regret Maximization Sickness
  31. Clarity of Thought
  32. Conviction-Led Contrarianism
  33. Pondering The Grass
  34. The Volume of Your Inaccuracy
  35. The State of Startup Media
  36. Building Informational Leverage (with Evan Armstrong)
  37. The Horse, The Jockey, or The Whole Race?
  38. Speculative Obsession (with Michael Dempsey)
  39. Don't Die With Your Music Still in You
  40. A Return To Artisanal Venture (with Rex Woodbury)
  41. Beliefs, Blockbusters, and Boyhood
  42. Creativity as Connectivity
  43. Revisiting Competitive Moats
  44. The 7 Deadly Sins of Venture Capital (with Dan Gray)
  45. Barking in Public
  46. Building Mighty Small Businesses
  47. When History Rhymes (with Beezer Clarkson)
  48. The Four Pillars of Venture Investing
  49. The Loudest Models (with Trace Cohen)
  50. Venture Capital Unbundled
  51. The Inevitability of Advertising
  52. The Future of Investing 101

2024 52

  1. Having a Conversation With Yourself: 2024
  2. 2024 in Books
  3. The Superhero Theory of Defense
  4. What Wicked Taught Me About B2B Sales
  5. Who Is My Neighbor?
  6. The Levers of Innovation
  7. The Unholy Trinity of Venture Capital
  8. Embrace The Nuance
  9. Performative Failure
  10. Different Strokes For Different Folks
  11. My Cup Runneth Over
  12. Even More a Father
  13. Back To The Future
  14. Loudest or Proudest
  15. The Apprenticeship Litmus Test
  16. Decades
  17. Unions, Unions Everywhere
  18. Against Your Own Self-Interest
  19. Mo' Money, Mo' Problems
  20. Science Fiction's Dueling Fates
  21. The Hits Business
  22. Little Sister Syndrome
  23. The Siren Song of Raising a Venture Fund
  24. Cultivating Cults
  25. Guide Your Gaze
  26. America
  27. The Groucho Marx Mandate
  28. From Digital Sandbox To Digital Garden
  29. Regret Porn
  30. The Hardening Of The Great Softening
  31. The Sine Waves of Creativity
  32. The Tail That Wags The Dog
  33. Foundations & Frontiers
  34. The Value Cycle
  35. Renegade Spotlight: Renegade Partners
  36. Life Imitates Art
  37. Oh Say, What is Truth?
  38. Hype Deflation & Inflation
  39. The Glass-Half War: Empty or Full?
  40. Taking a Breath
  41. Driving Your Own Train
  42. Revisiting The Professionalization of Startups
  43. Intellectual Seat Belts
  44. The Age of Incumbents
  45. Deep Tech For Deep Minds? Or Deep Pockets?
  46. The Trough of Feedback
  47. The Non-Zero-Sum Game of Ambition
  48. Panic Writing
  49. Books 2.0
  50. Crafting Your Average
  51. The Puritans of Venture Capital
  52. Long Enough To Matter

2023 53

  1. Having a Conversation With Yourself: 2023
  2. 2023 In Books
  3. It's Time To Build... But Build What?
  4. Revisiting The Death of a Venture Fund
  5. Sharing The Indie Era of Startups
  6. Revisiting The Age of Acquisition
  7. The Leaders of Movements
  8. The Bubble Brains of Silicon Valley
  9. Surviving The Death of Venture Capital
  10. Oops, I Did It Again
  11. You Don’t Want My Value Add
  12. The Inescapable Debate of Human Nature
  13. The Pace of FOMO Cycles
  14. The Value Chain of Capital
  15. Becoming An Allocator
  16. On Writing
  17. The Rising Generation
  18. Playing Different (Stupider) Games
  19. Teamshares, Hold Co's, & Corporate Cities
  20. Back To The Grass
  21. Institutionalized Belief In The Greater Fool
  22. King-Making vs. Taste-Making
  23. Historical Futurism
  24. The Wrath of Reading & Writing
  25. The Openness of AI
  26. Revisiting A Tale of Two Markets
  27. The Existential Dread of Cognitive Dissonance
  28. The Scramble Landscape
  29. The Axis of Building
  30. The Coward's Conviction
  31. VC Contagion
  32. The Gospel of ARK Invest
  33. On Hype And Hot Air
  34. Chasing The Rush of Creation
  35. Blaspheming Against The Hype
  36. Eat What You Kill
  37. Let Me Know How I Can Be Helpful
  38. Building an Actual Unicorn
  39. Relationship Liquidity
  40. The Renaissance of Rise and Grind
  41. Where Have All The Good Ones Gone?
  42. The Meme Economy
  43. Building Customer Love
  44. Competitive Moats
  45. Contrary Research
  46. What Is An Investor?
  47. Touch Some Grass
  48. Dreaming Of Dry Powder
  49. Updating The Hype Cycle
  50. Controlling Your Own Destiny
  51. Thinning The Herd
  52. Risk Management In The Age Of YOLO
  53. The Art and Science of Investing

2022 52

  1. Having a Conversation With Yourself: 2022
  2. 2022 in Books
  3. The Blackstone of Innovation
  4. What's In a Post-Mortem?
  5. I Choose Optimism
  6. The Age of Acquisition
  7. The Diligence That's Due
  8. Stewards of Capital
  9. Markets, Markets, and Markets
  10. The Hype Cycles of Venture Capital
  11. You Know Who You Should Talk To?
  12. Learning To Dream
  13. Learnable Empathy
  14. The Mysteries of an Economic Engine
  15. The Reality of Unrealistic Outliers
  16. Open-Source Knowledge
  17. Of Things That Matter Most
  18. Being Honest About Intellectual Honesty
  19. Toil We Must
  20. The Rise of The Cash Man
  21. Grabbing the Bear by the Horns
  22. The Tales of Usefulness Have Been Greatly Exaggerated
  23. The Storytelling of Investing
  24. The Outcome Distortion Complex
  25. You're The Only Investment That Matters
  26. Tailwinds: What's in a Thesis?
  27. Compensation Conversations
  28. The Natural Selection of Time
  29. Building a Product Engine
  30. Renegade Spotlight: The General Partnership
  31. Is Now a Bad Time To Be a VC?
  32. The Death of a Venture Fund
  33. All According To The [Terrible] Plan
  34. Contrary: My Renegade of Choice
  35. Fantasy Capital
  36. Cash—Kingmaker or Killer?
  37. Index Bets: From Products to People
  38. Renegade Spotlight: Synthesis
  39. The Talent Vortex: Mafias and Magnets
  40. Renegade Spotlight: Paradigm
  41. The Renegades of Venture Capital
  42. Renegade Spotlight: Lowercarbon
  43. Natural Selection Among Startups
  44. Why Most VCs Suck At Talent
  45. Renegade Spotlight: Homebrew
  46. Kids 3.0
  47. The Professionalization of Startups
  48. A Tale of Two Markets
  49. What's In a Valuation?
  50. The Productization of Venture Capital
  51. The Unbundling of Venture Capital
  52. I Love The Taste of Pain in the Morning

2021 1

  1. Networked Conviction

2020 1

  1. Investing 101 2.0