Concept · Investment & Valuation
Compound Interest
Origin: Ancient, Einstein attribution apocryphal
Biological Parallel
Bacterial populations don't just grow—they compound. One E. coli becomes two in 20 minutes, four in 40 minutes, over a million in 7 hours. This exponential growth isn't addition; it's multiplication of the multiplicand. The same process drives cancer metastasis, viral pandemics, and invasive species. Compound interest mirrors this biological default: growth on previous growth creates exponential curves that defy linear intuition, which is why humans consistently underestimate it despite it being biology's most fundamental pattern.