The $1K Mistake That Made Me a Better Investor

Back in 2014, I was riding high on Amazon stock—up nearly 3x in a few years. Then Bezos announced the Fire Phone, and I thought: this is terrible, I’m out. I sold.

Turns out the Fire Phone flopped spectacularly… but Amazon? It became a 14-bagger while I sat on the sidelines.

The brutal lesson: Don’t confuse being right about one bad idea with being right about the company. Bezos kept swinging—AWS, Prime, Whole Foods—and missing one swing doesn’t mean the batter’s done.

Fast forward to 2023. I’m holding TransMedics (TMDX), a medical device company crushing it with organ transplant tech. Early gains felt good. Then they announced an aviation acquisition—capital-intensive, margin-diluting. I hated it. The market cut the stock in half.

But I didn’t sell. I remembered the Fire Phone.

CEO Waleed Hassanein laid out the vision: a nationwide logistics network to optimize organ utilization. Two years later? TMDX tripled from its lows, revenue doubled, and that aviation unit now handles 78% of their transplants.

The payoff: Founder-led companies that aren’t afraid to fail often outperform. Give them runway. Q3 results showed 32% transplant revenue growth, 17% net margins, and they’re planning to 2x transplant volume to 10K while expanding into kidneys and international markets.

Warren Buffett said it best: “It’s good to learn from your mistakes. It’s better to learn from other people’s mistakes.”

I learned mine from Bezos. Now I’m applying it to watch TMDX execute.