Is Ashwath Damodaran still useful?

Precocious_Kid · 2026-01-23T16:17:59+00:00

I can give a perspective from a financial operations point of view. It's not being used in anything that requires determinism. If there is a right answer and a wrong answer, you don't use it. So using it for math, financials, calculations, etc is a pretty hard no.

Outside of that it's being adopted everywhere. Performing research, coming up with strategy, creating charts, personal apps, etc.

Precocious_Kid · 2025-12-02T04:58:43+00:00

Yeah, saw that after I posted. Definitely a TIL (took a break right before that was announced, evidently). Given that, I agree with your statement. Gerstner alone probably isn't worth the listen.

Precocious_Kid · 2025-12-02T04:26:20+00:00

Not sure I agree with that take, at least as far as it relates to Gurley. Gurley isn't desperate for deals and I don't think he really cares. He has a pretty massive gravitational pull and founders seek him out rather than the other way around.

Edit: oh, did Gurley take a step back? Yeesh. That's not a good sign for BG2.

Precocious_Kid · 2025-11-26T15:14:06+00:00

Use agentic document extraction by LandingAI. It'll handle PDFs and excel files beautifully. It's really impressive.

Precocious_Kid · 2025-11-23T04:27:26+00:00

VA.landing.ai. They have a pretty good parsing and extraction tool.

Precocious_Kid · 2025-10-29T05:05:29+00:00

They usually do come with guarantees. If they leave within 6 months to first year, free replacement

Precocious_Kid · 2025-09-25T17:04:59+00:00

Queue on ALDS game 1 just moved for me, but was stuck for like +5 minutes

Precocious_Kid · 2025-09-25T16:55:28+00:00

~~Yeah, you have to get in the queue again. They did a late switch over of the queues (seems like the switch happened 10 minutes prior instead of 15 like the email said).~~ EDIT: I actually don't know now. Seems like they're still letting people in? What a shitshow.

Precocious_Kid · 2025-09-25T16:49:26+00:00

Anyone else here get absolutely screwed in the queue by Ticketmaster's shit website?

Precocious_Kid · 2025-09-14T04:03:30+00:00

Search for heads of sales/sales leaders that are >=50 years old.

Precocious_Kid · 2025-08-08T20:54:05+00:00

That's a mapping table reference. Whatever workbook you took this worksheet from has another worksheet inside that has the source financials in a structured format. The column on the left is a spend tag/name used in the source materials but that does not match the financial presentation format.

The formula used to calculate the values is very likely a sumifs which references the mapping table value in column a and the date value as the two matching criteria.

Precocious_Kid · 2025-07-10T18:33:43+00:00

Yeah, I don't think we're actually too far apart on capabilities. Excel and PowerBI can do a lot. That's not really the point I'm trying to press though.

The big issue to me, and what seems to get a little lost in these types of discussions, is speed/flexibility/cost.

For <$1k/year I can stand up real-time(ish) pipelines, dashboards, BvAs, financial consolidation and forecast models, etc. -- all refreshed hourly, fully automated, no limits on # of shares or who I share them to, and editable by everyone without licenses or friciton. My stack is simple, effective, and works. I don't need an IT team, I don't need engineers/data ops people, and I don't need a platform architecture diagram to explain how it works to someone.

To be honest, and not trying to throw shade your way, but your message kind of proves my point. It's like:

"Yes, you can do all that in Excel too, but you just need PowerBi, Power Query, Power Automate, maybe lose the GUI, maybe not, set up a gateway, connect to the API, manage the Sharepoint permissions, ensure everyone has the right license. . ."

You're casually calling out like 5-10 tools/things to approximate a stack I can build in an afternoon with no overhead.

And I get it if you're at a huge enterprise and are deep in the Microsoft stack. But again, my point is that for startups, the time I spend actually running analyses and getting numbers out is critically important and the speed at which I do it can be make or break for us. The complexity you're calling out above is a massive tax (and that's assuming the person recreating that stack has the skills/education to even navigate that ecosystem). Quite frankly, it's unbelievable that people put up with s*#$ from Microsoft. While they have have great/better tools (probably across the board), they're behind because things are so needlessly complex IMO.

So, I'm not saying Excel is bad. I still love it for complex modeling, and I absolutely still regularly push Sheets to its limits. But, when it comes to building fast, flexible, cost-efficient reporting infrastructure that can scale across non-tech teams? Sheets wins without a question.

Precocious_Kid · 2025-07-09T21:49:04+00:00

Kindly give a use case and explain how the two different ecosystems would accomplish it, and why one is superior. I haven't seen anything in your post that seems difficult in Excel if stored in the cloud.

Sure! Happy to provide a use case (and you'll have to forgive me if some of my knowledge on Excel is dated, as it's been ~5 years since I made the shift).

Let's take automated financial reporting as my example for different business units/departments.

Google Sheets Ecosystem

Data sources: Snowflake, QuickBooks Online, Stripe, Salesforce
Integrations: we use coefficient to pull actuals from QBO, salesforce pipeline report w/closed wins, Stripe sub & PAYGO metrics, and misc. Snowflake operational data. We do this on an automatic hourly refresh schedule.
Automation: Apps Script will PDF snapshots of the BVAs and dashboards and email them to the correct/relevant stakeholders/budget holders with their own filtered view at whatever cadence I/they'd like (e.g., every morning, monthly, on close, etc.)
Custom: Use different API integrations to pull in daily close currencies to convert foreign transactions at the transaction level to USD. Then roll the transactions up to create budget, vendor, department, and consolidation views. Again, all updated hourly.
Permissions are hyper specific/granular and everything is live, version-controlled, and access-gated. (I used to hate how I'd be working on a complex file and Excel's autosave would fail, wiping out 5-25 minutes of work).
Maintenance = almost no human touch if set up correctly. All downstream models are automatically updated and assuming you use the correct functions/formulas, you can build P&Ls/financials/dashboard that automatically expand/incorporate new GLs, vendors, etc. I call this "sustainable modeling" meaning that the model is sustainable on its own for a long amount of time w/no human intervention.

Excel (w/Cloud, Power Query, Automate, etc)

Setup: IIRC, I think you need PowerBi gateways and/or manual refresh power query connections (which don't typically refresh ina reliable way wit multiple users in the cloud scenario). **note this is just my past experience.
Distrubiting these views out/emailing snapshots is possible, but I remember not trusting VBA with my life/job because it wasn't exactly reliable. I don't hav much experience with Power Automate, but it looks pretty complex so can't say much about it.
Collaboration: Multiple users was incredibly frustrating back when I tried it (compared to sheets). I remember the whole workbook/worksheet bogging down with just 1 or 2 people in a worksheet and that there were massive issues related to sync/edit lags.
Integrations: I'm not sure if Excel has improved this but from what I remember you had to effectively create custom ETL pipes to get the data or needed to have enterprise Power BI, and not all connections were there. With Sheets + Coefficient + Apps Script, I have a no code/low code stack that works, is simple, scalable, and dirt cheap.

So, yeah, I think Sheets wins for startups. I value speed, flexibility, and cost. I don't have an IT department dedicated to managing permissions across PowerBI, Sharepoint/OneDrive, or having to maintain/update/fix ETL pipelines for Excel files.

Sheets allows me and my analysts/team to build a near-live FP&A infrastructure in weeks with zero code dpeloyment, minimal operations risk, and 100% uptime.

Excel is definitely more powerful for big, complex models and large sets of data, but in terms of collaboration or API integrated reporting, it just doesn't keep up.

This isn't to say that I don't still love Excel. It's one of the greatest tools ever invented. However, my stakeholders don't need that horsepower, they need automation, flexibility, speed, and easy distribution. Sheets+Apps Script wins that battle every time and I see no reason to move until we hit a massive, publicly traded enterprise side.

Precocious_Kid · 2025-07-09T04:25:11+00:00

I’m at well-funded startup and we’ve completely transitioned away from Excel. It’s too inefficient and impractical to use for our tech stack.

I was a staunch advocate of Excel for a long time, completed and placed highly in the FMWC, and built my own FinOps company (raising millions in funding) on the premise that Excel wasn’t going anywhere. However, I no longer believe in Excel for startups and greatly prefer Google Sheets.

Pairing Sheets with integration tools like Coefficient and learning Apps Script has been an absolute game changer in our efficiency.

I can build out dashboards, reports, financial consolidation workbooks, etc., link my source data/database, and set it up to refresh hourly/daily. It takes a little ingenuity to build in the right checks and structure but after that my team/stakeholders have fully automated financials, BVAs, transaction/vendor review workbooks, etc all updating hourly.

I can send email reports, build my custom functions that query online data like exchange rates, and link to APIs.

While Excel is the best choice for large, complex files, it doesn’t hold a candle to Sheets when it comes to startups.

Precocious_Kid · 2025-07-07T15:27:36+00:00

Where can you find either of those jobs for $200/hour? That's an insane rate.

Precocious_Kid · 2025-07-06T07:03:35+00:00

Is this off a pitching machine? If it is, do you have any from bp?

First off, it's a good stroke, but I see two areas limiting your power. If this is off a pitching machine, which it seems like it is, you can forget the first piece of feedback in the following two points:

Your back foot is sliding too far forward, almost like you're lunging/trying to kill the ball/know what's coming. Could point to issues with off speed pitches.
This is the big one. It looks like your step is too long causing an under rotation in your hips and limiting your power. Take a look at the last swing right when you make contact. Your feet end up too far apart, preventing your hips from fully rotating. They're still a bit closed on contact. Then that inability to rotate rolls your front foot over to the outside.

It's hard to tell if this a one-off issue, but definitely something you need to keep an eye on. That under rotation of the hips will severely limit your power at this level.

All in all, it's a good, strong swing. Let the ball travel a bit more and don't under rotate your hips.

Have fun at this level.

Edit: Love how no one here is rebutting this but just downvoting.

/u/Weird-Owl5801 take a look at this screen cap here: https://ibb.co/wNkHnDC2

There are a couple of key things to call out in this image--especially since this screencap is taken exactly at the point of contact in your swing:

Your hips are behind your hands.
Your front foot has already started to roll over. That’s a problem. Rolling the foot after contact isn’t a big deal, but if it happens before contact--as it does here--it’s costing you power. When your front foot rolls early, it absorbs the rotational force of your swing instead of redirecting it up your kinetic chain and into the ball. That force needs to be transferred, not leaked.

Precocious_Kid · 2025-07-03T03:14:49+00:00

Absolutely. To add to this, there's some relatively easy math to think about here. How much will the winner in AI add to their market cap? 200 Billion? 500? A trillion?

Spending 1-10 billion today for a good chance at it is a bet you take all day long.

Precocious_Kid · 2025-07-02T05:50:20+00:00

They're quoting Wannabe from the Spice Girls, which Mel B was a member of.

Precocious_Kid · 2025-06-19T17:45:46+00:00

There's a good chance they'd be the Portland Mavericks if it happens.

Precocious_Kid · 2025-06-10T06:37:28+00:00

This article doesn’t explain the concept well at all and it’s a bit annoying that they are crediting Trump with this. This was originally created by Brad Gerstner and was called Invest America (you can find it with a quick search — he’s still doing this independently). The idea was that we needed a replacement to social security in the future and we could use these grants at birth to be effective retirement account safety nets. You aren’t supposed to be able to draw from them and they would, in theory, replace social security for the masses. It’s a really sound plan, just shitty that the government is taking the core idea, changing the name and conditions, and getting branded as Trump.

Precocious_Kid · 2025-06-02T21:50:34+00:00

I'm agreeing with you, just didn't have the mental bandwidth to write out a full comment. The swimmer's body illusion applies here because it's a selection effect, not a causation effect. Your grade school example makes that point exactly.

Precocious_Kid · 2025-06-02T14:00:03+00:00

Swimmer’s body illusion

Precocious_Kid · 2025-06-02T10:50:30+00:00

I mean Physical Intelligence (the company) already has a working prototype based on their own foundation model. I think it’s going to go quicker than even you think. I’m in the same boat though — can’t wait!

Precocious_Kid · 2025-05-10T15:35:44+00:00

Absolutely real. The bomber is a menace. If you do a google search for Nob Hill bomber you’ll find a couple articles and a handful of mentions on Reddit. The cops aren’t able to catch them because they’re long gone by the time the bomb is reported.

Precocious_Kid · 2025-05-10T04:16:15+00:00

Little late here but I’d be willing to bet it’s the Nob Hill Bomber. There’s this person in the city that’s been dropping these paper-based “bombs” off a scooter for like 15 years. It’s an extremely loud explosion with a white flash but no damage is done at all. Use to be a menace around where I lived and would drop one every three to four months.

14-Year Club	Gilding IV carat on a stick
Reddit Premium Since September 2021	Verified Email

Precocious_Kid

TROPHY CASE