Page 64 - Morgan Housel - The Psychology of Money_ Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness-Harriman House Limited (2020)

list of richest Americans has, on average, roughly 20% turnover per decade
for causes that don’t have to do with death or transferring money to another
COBACOBA
family member.¹⁷

Capitalism is hard. But part of the reason this happens is because getting
money and keeping money are two different skills.

Getting money requires taking risks, being optimistic, and putting yourself
out there.

But keeping money requires the opposite of taking risk. It requires humility,
and fear that what you’ve made can be taken away from you just as fast. It
requires frugality and an acceptance that at least some of what you’ve made

is attributable to luck, so past success can’t be relied upon to repeat
indefinitely.

Michael Moritz, the billionaire head of Sequoia Capital, was asked by
Charlie Rose why Sequoia was so successful. Moritz mentioned longevity,
noting that some VC firms succeed for five or ten years, but Sequoia has
prospered for four decades. Rose asked why that was:

Moritz: I think we’ve always been afraid of going out of business.

Rose: Really? So it’s fear? Only the paranoid survive?

Moritz: There’s a lot of truth to that … We assume that tomorrow won’t be
like yesterday. We can’t afford to rest on our laurels. We can’t be
complacent. We can’t assume that yesterday’s success translates into

tomorrow’s good fortune.

Here again, survival.