Ryan Petersen

uh peter kaufman and so he's like one of munger's really good friends for many many years and he's the one that put together this almanac so he just thought that was so funny that he started bringing me to charlie's house and like tell charlie the story and

One of my favorite things that Charlie told me at one of these dinners at his house was when I told him about Flexport, he was like, oh, you had a great business because the key to success is dumb competition, which that's kind of insulting.

We have some really smart competitors, but I always say that to people who are like,

building AI companies, it's just like, what a nightmare.

Your, your competitors are literally AI geniuses.

Like you should find a way to apply AI in some other domain.

So you're not competing with the smartest people on planet earth.

Cause like the odd, it's like trying to be a boxer.

Like you're kind of, you might beat all the people in your local gym, but at some point you're going to run into, uh, somebody bigger, stronger pastor, John Jones, or somebody who's going to kick your ass.

Yeah.

I don't think we're the smartest people in the world, but within our little old school industry, we can do some damage.

That's hilarious because he loves inventory.

Yeah.

And he also had an inventory of extra rooms just in case somebody needed one.

Well, because everyone else hates it.

There's a contrarian element to it.

Everybody went to business school and learned that excess inventory is evil and carries working capital costs, etc.

But he's in his business, which is airline, airport, airplane parts, aviation parts.

Having excess inventory means you can provide the part on demand.

Any part, you have it.