Venture Capital Archive

The 15th century French mathematician and religious philosopher Blaise Pascal once wrote, “Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.” This loosely translates to, “The present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter.” A more literal translation is: “I was too lazy to pull together my thoughts in advance, so you will have to sort through the jumble of ideas I am about to share with you.” As Pascal points out, it usually takes people (even a mathematical genius) longer to gather and organize their thoughts than it does to simply communicate them in a Joycian, stream-of-consciousness manner. Such lack of preparedness requires less effort, but it seldom results in effective communication.