Mona founder David Walsh reveals his keys to success

DAVID Walsh was ranked number one on the list of Tasmania’s top business movers and shakers. Here he reveals his key factors for business success.

Mona founder and #1 on the list of Tasmania’s business movers and shakers David Walsh. Picture: JUSTIN LLOYD

I OFTEN say Mona is a ship afloat on a sea of chance. However, it has given me a voice, so let me say this as clearly as I can.

Mona may have ended up an expensive lounge room. The fact that it didn’t isn’t due to my expansive endeavour. Everyone does the best that they can when they take on a project.

The key factor is chance. Even the expression of talent is enhanced enormously by good fortune, or impeded by bad. But chance is liberating — it respects failure and limits the merit that devolves from success.

Being lucky has, however, taught me something about luck. To benefit from randomness, the trick is to seek to have an asymmetric upside.

When investing, don’t risk all your capital seeking a small gain. Take huge risks with a small part of your capital, and keep most of it safe. The upside gains are about the same, but the downside risks are reduced. And the winning system may just keep on winning.

In terms of employment, I believe that personal job security undermines opportunity. It’s a lot like betting all your capital on a small gain. Companies go broke, government departments get downsized, and people get laid off. That’s too much downside risk, given the upside is just plodding along.

A better job is something that gives you time to try out your own schemes. An Uber driver is in a stronger position than an executive if she uses her time to pursue an asymmetric outcome. Take a big risk with a little bit of your time. Study agriculture, or write a play, or start a restaurant.

And society benefits. Lots of people doing little things makes the big things better. Lots of risky restaurants (that start off small, but may grow if all goes well) means that the successful restaurants are better (except for McDonald’s, of course).

Because luck is a such an important factor in outcomes, the litmus test of the quality of a society is not how it rewards success (success is its own reward) but how it compensates for honourable failure (a failure is honourable when there is skin in the game — not a wealth manager losing someone else’s money). The trapeze act will be more dramatic if there is a safety net.

I got rich gambling, and essentially bought the right to express an opinion by doing something grand. That was too risky — I put all my eggs in the one basket case. So don’t do as I did, do as I preach.

Or, if you think I don’t preach with sufficient conviction, maybe you would listen to Jesus Christ? Scatter your seeds — some won’t grow because they fall among stones, and some are choked among thorns. “But others fell on good ground and yielded a crop, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty [Matthew 13:23]”. Jesus went for the asymmetric upside.

The best crop for society, though, is the human crop. How much better the yield if the seeds were planted by an Uber driver who had an agriculture degree?

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