What I Learned About Investing From Darwin - Part 3: Don't Be Lazy - Be Very Lazy

In this episode of Value Investing: The Starvine Way, we wrap up our three-part deep dive into Pulak Prasad’s "What I Learned About Investing from Darwin" — and tackle the most counterintuitive pillar of his philosophy:

“Don’t be lazy… be very lazy.”

At first glance, that sounds like standard investing advice: trade less, be patient, let compounding work. But Prasad goes much deeper. Drawing on evolutionary biology, punctuated equilibrium, and decades of real-world investing results, he explains why short-term volatility is often meaningless — and how inactivity, when applied to the right businesses, becomes a powerful competitive advantage.

In this episode, we explore:

• Why evolution (and business) changes rapidly in the short term but stabilizes over long periods

• The Grant–Kurtén Principle of Investing (GKPI) — using short-term “shocks” to buy, not sell

• Real case studies like WNS, Thermax, and Page Industries that show how rare buying windows drive outsized returns

• Why Prasad almost never sells — and the only three reasons he ever does

• How most wealth is created by a tiny handful of companies, held for very long periods

• Why focusing on IRR often sabotages true multi-baggers

• How boredom, patience, and doing nothing separate great investors from merely smart ones

We also cover why:

• Creative destruction is slower than most people think

• Stock price movement is not the same thing as business change

• The biggest gains happen on a tiny fraction of trading days — and you only capture them if you stay invested

I’ll also share where my own approach slightly differs when managing real client portfolios — especially around valuation and concentration risk — while still embracing the core lesson: great businesses deserve time, not tinkering.

This episode is about resisting the urge to act, tuning out noise, and letting compounding quietly do its work — even when it feels uncomfortable, boring, or downright wrong.

If you’ve ever:

• Sold too early

• Traded too much

• Or confused price movement with business reality

…this one’s for you.