Lindy's lesson (and how it's applied by Warren Buffet, Jeff Bezos and me)
Reading time: 4 minutes
Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, is often asked:
“What's going to change in the next 10 years?”
But he thinks there is a better, more important question:
“What's NOT going to change in the next 10 years?”
He explains:
“You can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time. ... [I]n our retail business, we know that customers want low prices, and I know that's going to be true 10 years from now. They want fast delivery; they want vast selection.”
In the 1960s, Broadway performers met after shows at Lindy’s in New York to discuss shows and performances by peers. Apparently, the deli served spectacular cheesecake. At Lindy’s, the performers developed a theory that the longer a show had been around, the longer it was likely to continue.
Mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot and author Nassim Taleb refined this theory, and dubbed it the “Lindy effect”.
In a nutshell:
The longer something non-perishable exists, the longer it can be expected to exist.
Non-perishable refers to ideas, products, technologies, books, practices, etc. Something like human life is perishable, so it’s not Lindy compatible.
Here are examples of things that have demonstrated their robustness and embedded value by surviving shocks and challenges over an extended period. It’s thus likely, that they’ll be around many years into the future.
The Bible and Christianity
The works of William Shakespeare
Chess
Drinking alcohol
Prostitution
Gambling (see the recent boom in sports betting)
Smoking
Smoking is an interesting case study.
Although cigarette smoking is relatively new, people have been smoking tobacco for millennia. But in recent decades, this once revered and cool habit has been taking hits like a boxer past his prime - PR crucifixion by health professionals, exorbitant taxes, smokers being exiled into horrid hazy shoeboxes in airports, and the vilest pictures imaginable on cigarette packets.
Things went from this:
To this:
Under these circumstances, you may have expected global cigarette consumption to nosedive, yet it’s remained relatively solid.
And interestingly, as traditional cigarettes have slowly declined, vaping, a technological alternative, has skyrocketed.
People have been puffing forever, and it seems they won’t let their lungs off the hook anytime soon.
Investments
’s great in-depth article about the Lindy effect in investing and stock performance highlights how Berkshire Hathaway invests along these lines, too. “Time is the friend of the wonderful company, the enemy of the mediocre”, says Warren Buffett.
Only one of the top 10 companies by holding value in Berkshire Hathaway’s portfolio is less than 100 years old.
Another interesting thought from
’s article:“[Coca-Cola] survived the Great Depression, two World Wars, and the 1980s Cola wars, just to name a few. Not only did the company survive all this, it has thrived and increased its dividends for the past 61 consecutive years. Based on the Lindy Effect, Coca-Cola has a better chance of making it to the next century than Google.”
On another note, from a Lindy perspective, Bitcoin seems to be doing surprisingly well. Launched in 2009, Bitcoin is—despite massive scepticism and backlash—still going strong 15 years later. Not bad for a new technology. The longer it hangs in there, the longer it is expected to do so.
Theory, not law
Of course, the Lindy effect is a useful heuristic, but it’s not a scientific law. Sometimes, the theory doesn’t hold.
Founded in 1847, Lehman Brothers was a financial services firm that survived multiple economic downturns. However, it imploded in 2008 due to its involvement in the subprime mortgage crisis, marking the largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history at the time.
Arthur Andersen, founded in 1913, was once one of the "Big Five" accounting firms. However, it collapsed in 2002 after the company was found guilty of charges related to the auditing of Enron.
Personal applications
The Lindy effect doesn’t apply only to religion, business and societal behaviour. Here are some areas where Lindy thinking has proved to be helpful in my own life:
Reading: I prefer books that have proved their worth over years rather than today’s best-seller list.
Fashion: If you have ever cringed at old Facebook photos, you’ll understand that classics beat this season’s way-out trends.
Weight loss and fitness: Super-quick improvements are undone with equal speed or met with injury. Don’t yo-yo. Slow and steady does it.
Writing online: An audience built article by article tends to be more sticky (and engaged) than an audience gained overnight by a viral article.
Relationships: The longer a friendship has lasted, the longer I expect it to last.
The moral of the story:
Trust in time.
It is a superb filter to distinguish fads and bullshit from what is truly valuable.
Hence the saying, “Stand the test of time”.
Rob’s recommendations of the week:
🎧 Podcast: How to Master Storytelling - An entertaining discussion between Shaan Puri and writing guru David Perell, sharing practical tips on how to tell better stories. They refer to this great bit by Dave Chappelle, who masterfully used storytelling to get the public on his side as he fought Comedy Central: Dave Chappelle: Unforgiven | Exposing Comedy Central
📧 Newsletter: Why is LinkedIn so cringe? - A funny article by
from (one of my favourite Substacks) about all that’s wrong with LinkedIn.📺 TV: The Bear - A dark comedy about a young chef from the fine dining world who returns to Chicago to run his family's sandwich shop.
Fascinating read! And yet, ironically, the Lindy Hop didn't stay around.
...but in all seriousness, it's a neat idea to ruminate on.
Reminds me of (1 of) Emerson's advice on 📚 to read: never read any that is not a year old.