Welcome to The Nightcrawler, a weekly collection of thought-provoking articles and analysis on technology, innovation, and long-term investing. The Nightcrawler is published every Friday evening by Eric Markowitz, Managing Partner of Nightview Capital and the firm’s Director of Research. Follow him on X. 

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Special Note: I’m hosting a small meetup for Nightcrawler readers in Omaha next Friday, May 2nd at 4pm. If you’ll be in town for the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting and want to join, just reply to this email with your name. I’ll send over the location details early next week.

Would love to see you there!

In this evening’s email…

Quote of the week: “Quality is a direct experience independent of— and prior to—intellectual abstractions.” Robert Pirsig 

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The inner game of long-term investing

I thoroughly enjoyed this recent episode of The Art of Quality, where my friend William Oliver sits down with Chris Mayer—author of 100 Baggers and one of the more thoughtful long-term investors out there.

Chris talks about what it actually feels like to hold a business for years, and why some of the best investment ideas don’t show up in headlines—they reveal themselves slowly, over time.  His story about owning Brown & Brown since day one of his fund is a great example of how patience, attention, and deep curiosity can lead to surprising long-term outcomes.

This episode kicks off William’s new series on the “inner game”—the psychology and mindset behind building things that last. Highly recommend.

  • Key quote:  “I always have this thought that there’s no substitute for ownership—for actually owning a business. You can study it all you want when you don’t own it. And think you know it, but it’s something different when you actually own it. Some kind of intangible quality kicks in. You’re committed. You pay closer attention. And over time, you just learn so much more—about the people, the culture, how things evolve.”

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Investing 3.0 and the search for hidden value

I’ve gotten to know Chris Begg over the past couple of years, and it was a real pleasure to hear him on the latest episode of Richer, Wiser, Happier. In this conversation with William Green, Chris dives into what he calls “Investing 3.0”—a framework for identifying businesses that may not look conventionally cheap, but hold hidden layers of long-term value.

The concept involves spotting asymmetries, recognizing exponential systems like networks and graphs, and understanding the intangible compounding of intelligence, innovation, and culture.

Chris talks Tesla, spiritual philosophy, embodied intelligence, and how he’s built a life with radical intentionality. For those of us who think deeply about investing, but also about how to live, this one’s a gem.

  • Key quote:  “I’ve come to believe that intelligence is embodied—not just cognitive. When I’m making an investment decision, there’s often a physical sensation tied to its quality. It’s hard to explain or transfer, but over time, you learn to feel what a high-quality decision actually feels like. Athletes talk about this too—there’s a somatic knowing that only comes through experience.”

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Robots, tractors, and the long-term game

We just published our Q1 Investor Letter. In it, we go deep on our field research at John Deere, where we saw firsthand how autonomy and precision agriculture are reshaping the future of farming. We also share new insights from our primary research partnership with InPractise, focusing on the next decade of industrial robotics and AI-driven automation.

While markets feel jittery, our view is clear: long-term structural trends—particularly in automation, energy, and intelligent systems—are accelerating. We’re optimistic about the future.

  • Key quote:  “Amid the noise, we see an opportunity to lean into long-term thinking, stay disciplined, and position ourselves for durable growth ahead. In fact, we believe we are at a historic pivot point in technology – a moment when years of groundwork in automation, artificial intelligence, and electrification are converging to accelerate innovation at an unprecedented pace to create incredible growth opportunities. In our view, this technological inflection will drive massive value creation in the coming years, far outweighing the transitory macro fears. Rather than focus on near-term volatility, we dedicate this letter to the deep thematic research—and on-the-ground investigation—that underpins our long-term optimism.”

A few more links I enjoyed: 

The Secret Weapon of Great Investors – via Arne Alsin

  • Key quote: “‍One of the best questions an investor can ask is this: Is the asset I own improving? If you own a machine and it’s declining in value, maybe it makes sense to sell. But if you own a business—especially one that’s building infrastructure, improving its software, or expanding its market—you may want to think twice. Because time is your ally. When I owned Amazon in the early 2010s, the stock would occasionally crater. It was painful. But I looked at what the business was doing: building out distribution centers, launching AWS, cutting costs, experimenting relentlessly. That wasn’t a company in decline. That was a company reinvesting in itself. The quote was down. The value was up. That’s the essence of long-term investing: learning to separate price from value. And it requires discipline, patience, and a multi-year view.”

Epizone AI: Outside the Code Stack – via Kevin Kelly

  • Key quote: “One of the most significant scientific insights into understanding our own humanity was the relatively recent insight that we are the product of more than just the evolution of genes. While we are genetic descendents of some ape-like creatures in the past, we modern humans are also molded each generation by a shared learning that is passed along by a different mechanism outside of biology. Commonly called “culture”, this human-created environment forms much of what we consider best about our species. Culture is so prevalent in our lives, especially our modern urban lives, that it is invisible and hard to recognize. But without human culture to support us, we humans would be unrecognizable.”

50 Things I’ve Learned Writing Construction Physics – via Brian Potter

  • Key quote: “Because the scope of what I write about has gotten so broad, and the backlog has gotten so large, I thought it would be useful to condense a list of some of the major things I’ve learned writing the newsletter. It’s not a summary of every newsletter I’ve written, but a collection of what I think are some of the major high-level takeaways, interesting or surprising facts, and things that gave a major update to my worldview.”

Why America reinvents itself every 80 years — and is doing so again – via Peter Leyden / Freethink 

  • Key quote: “I’m a tech guy, and over my career, I have increasingly come to understand the world through the lens of new technologies. I’ve come to believe that, to understand any era of human history, you have to start with an understanding of the technologies that humans of that time could utilize to drive the economy and reshape the society. The technology of any era defines what’s possible — and what’s impossible.”

From the archives:

Just Do It – Art Williams (1987)

  • Key quote: “To speak to you about how to win in business, there’s a lot of obvious things I could talk about. You first have to find a need. You’ve got to fill the need for the consumer out there. You’ve got to have a market. You got to have somebody to sell your product or your service to. You’ve got to, if you really want to get big and win big, you’ve got to have a uniqueness, there’s got to be something a little bit different from you than all the competition out there. But by far the most important thing you’ve got to have to win in business in these United States today, is a very unique kind of mental toughness.”