Skin in the game

Fungus in the skin

In business and finance, the term skin in game is used to refer to owners or directors who are significantly involved in an investment vehicle, such as shares of companies, in which outside investors are asked to invest. In this sentence, “skin” is shorthand for the person or money in question, and “game” is the metaphor for the activities on the playing field in question.

If the principals or owners have invested their own money in the investment vehicle, potential and existing investors will transfer this transfer as a vote of confidence. Skinning in the game, or insider ownership, informs investors that the company is likely to do its best to generate returns for its investors.

The idea behind executives putting their skin in the game is to make sure that corporations are managed by like-minded people involved in the company. Executives can talk all they need to, but the best vote of confidence is to risk their own money as well as outside investors.

His words opened my eyes to my current situation and surprised me because I never thought I could be admired by anyone, and he recommended the book Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

Also on the family side, I have always lived in a business environment. I am the son and grandson of an entrepreneur. I know what it is like to work for customers, to sacrifice for a business and to dedicate the family capital so that none of the families of the employees of the family business lack anything to eat in times of crisis.

Now, with age, on reflection, I do not consider myself smarter than anyone else, but fortunate, because of the education and opportunities that life has given me. But to have reached where I am right now, without my childhood experiences, studies, tenacity, patience, obsession to learn and the support of people who believe in me and love me, would never have been possible.

These two decisions, which I made in the past, in addition to many others, have made me reach September 2020 in a very advantageous situation, but despite the fact that I feel better than ever in the uncertainty, the road has not been easy, nor will it be.

The skin for elementary school children

There were many ways to call them: “cabinets of curiosities”, “rooms of oddities”, “rooms of wonders”. It doesn’t matter what we call them, but those bizarre collections halfway between the ‘freak shows’ that took biological oddities from town to town and our art or natural history museums triumphed among the nobles, aristocrats and bourgeois of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

In it, we can see a Taleb with an absolute mastery of ‘beef’ and a brassy, condescending and even visceral argumentative style that, yes, makes the book morbid and amusing, but ineffective. Taleb seems to want to tackle all issues with a mixture of gallantry, wit and radicalism. However, ‘Skin in the game’ is a superb example of the risk you run if you jump into all the puddles with a theoretical approach that is not 4×4.

However, it is intellectually dangerous to stay on the surface or to ridicule it. Taleb’s books are passionately read by thousands of people and used as authoritative arguments in numerous situations. This is so, because (whether we like it or not) they contain clear diagnoses that deserve to be discussed, they contain proposals that deserve to be put in context.

Skin in the gamebook by nassim nicholas taleb

A bold new work from the author of The Black Swan and Antifragile that challenges many of our traditional beliefs about risk and reward, politics and religion, finance and personal responsibility.

In one of his most provocative books, famed thinker Nassim Nicholas Taleb redefines what it means to understand the world, succeed in a profession, contribute to a just and equitable society, detect absurdity, and influence others. Citing examples ranging from Hammurabi to Seneca, or from the giant Antaeus to Donald Trump, Taleb demonstrates how the willingness to accept one’s risks is an essential attribute of heroes, saints and successful individuals in all areas of society.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Lebanon, 1960) has devoted his life to studying the problems of luck, uncertainty, probability and knowledge. An essayist, researcher and financier, he is a member of the Institute for Mathematical Sciences at New York University and Professor of Uncertainty Sciences at the University of Massachusetts and the London Business School.