Friday, August 8, 2025

Building a skyscraper.

You own a two-acre parcel in downtown Miami right now. You bought it when it was covered just with gravel and weeds, but you could see the promise it holds. It's enormously valuable, even though it's not yet producing income. {200 million}
Holding onto this valuable asset could be challenging. 
The surrounding properties, though often far less valuable, generate income, making them more comfortable to retain. A smaller, less valuable vacant lot—covered with gravel and weeds and costing you money without providing income—might feel easier to hold onto.
Eventually, it’s time to build a tall structure on the site: multiple money-generating endeavors in the same structure; residential, hotel, commercial. Leases are already signed. Payments won’t begin until tenants move in.
You wait and observe.
I recall watching a similar site in Minneapolis years ago. Work began with numerous vehicles moving material out of the lot. Months passed. Then material was brought in. Lines of trucks would arrive, yet it remained just a hole in the ground. More than a year went by, and it stayed that way—we grew accustomed to seeing only a hole.
Then, without warning, a tall building grew rapidly. Every time we looked that way it was taller, until it was finished and making its owners rich.
Much of the preparation for the structure happened out of sight—except below grade, where the workers toiled—until, suddenly, it emerged as a glorious edifice.

Tuesday, May 20, 2025

Brain Trust compares Microvision to a biotech.

Last night, before the investor meeting in Redmond, a collection of investors -- representing lots of shares -- got together for dinner.


One comment struck me, at the time and gave food for thought for the rest of the evening. 


"Microvision is a lot like a biotech." Investing in it is a lot like investing in a Biotech company. 


In that Biotech companies, investors invest a lot of money with no guarantees that it will meet approval, etc, but that if it does... the returns are huge.


Sure there haven't been earnings, but if we compare to a biotech company, this company has the equivalent of a cure for cancer -- and also a side-effect free cure for obesity --electronics version. 


The near eye display has the potential to change cure sore necks by putting the display front and center when you're standing up, and the LiDAR to prevent accidents, and serve numerous other functions by allowing machinery to see.


Not delivering income at the moment is problematic for investors, of course. But there is solid value under that. 

Monday, April 21, 2025