Concept: Taking notes is not about capturing what was said. It is not about capturing “insights”. It is all about capturing what creates alpha.
On Talk and Panel Selection
Make sure that more than half of your time is spent talking with people (d’oh!).
Choose 80% of talks in areas that should be front and center to your area of investing, thesis, activities (“A+”). That includes 20% of talks or panels where have the hunch that you would very likely learn nothing (!) new (“A-“).
Choose 20% of talks in left field areas (“B”). Pay special attention:
- How is that field connected in the value chain or otherwise to your field? What are events or market dynamics that people are talking about that would affect your field or ops either upstream or downstream?
- Who are the people attending these talks? What motivates them? How are they thinking about it? Who are their customers, stakeholders, investors? How do they see the world?
On Note Taking
- For “A+” and “B”: Make notes on anything interesting you hear in these talks and conversations, anything that tickled your spider senses or connected with your convictions, cadence, people; as well as anything that goes against your convictions or ethos (!). Avoid jotting down truisms.
- For “A-“: Jot down key points and their reasoning. Mark anything that goes against your conviction or ethos (!). Qualify people on that panel or talk: what do you think motivates them, what’s their background, where are they coming from?
- Talk to people who attended the same panel or talk:
- What do they think were the key points?
- What was surprising to them? Why?
- What will they do more research or exploration on when they get back from the conference?
- What will they do differently in the future? Why?
Set Your Notes Aside.
Don’t talk about them, neither with co-workers nor with your AI nor with LPs nor with Investors. Be very careful if you think you might have to: Is there really any insight or alpha that has a half-life of less than 1 week? There are exceptions: Perhaps an acquisition or gov contract or person or company that is shutting down where you can pick up great talent… but it’s rare.
Revisit Later.
After each of 1 week, 2 weeks, and 4 weeks: Search social media, blog posts, linkedin, news articles, podcasts specifically for the notes you took. Cross out all notes that you took that are mentioned: None of them will be alpha. They will now be used and are discoverable in all LLMs and GPT models. Note the time it took for these points to diffuse into the market and to become “common knowledge”. Ironically, many of them might turn out to be against your convictions or observations (hence your alpha!), but these will be statements that your investors or stakeholders will read about.
What you’re left with are:
- Candidates for Soft Alpha: quotes or opinions from other people you talked to that were not mentioned in any mainstream media that you found somehow relevant. Obviously, it’s someone else’s opinion or conviction, so you’re not the only one knowing about it, but it’s a more rare anecdote or information point. There might be some value here.
- Candidates for Hard Alpha: quotes or opinions or convictions that only you heard, or that only made sense for your specific field, or that only you were able to pick out of a sea of signals, or that only resonated with you because of other proprietary information or insights you have.
Present these findings to your team and your AI model: What is beta, what is alpha? Where do we have a contrarian view? Why? What are implicit assumptions or convictions that need to be true to come to that view?