Welcome to The Saturday Slack, a list on what what I’m pondering and exploring with a short summary for those too busy to dive in.
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Curiosity and interest.
More than any other “skills,” I’ve seen that these two have the ability to create massive leverage in my career.
Take two people.
One has deep curiosity for the field. One doesn’t.
The former wins every single time.
Why?
Because working feels like play to her.
She doesn’t slog through the day waiting for orders. She sees the bigger picture. She spends her free time thinking, exploring, and learning which massively compounds her ability and allows her to stitch together the multiplicities in ways the other person will never be able to.
Want to be the top percentile but are not curious or interested in your day to day? In it because of prestige, money, optionality, or upside?
Leave.
I’m not saying go find your passion, but find something that directionally feels like play, because only then will you exceed beyond your wildest dreams.
Quotes of the Week
“If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will avoid one hundred days of sorrow.” Chinese Proverb.
Scarcity and desperation lead to innovation. Not fat balance sheets nor removing skin from the game via secondaries. It will be interesting to see if the vast amount of VC money flooding the market helps or hinders software innovation. – My Twitter feed
“I did not intend to get rich. I just wanted to get independent.” Charlie Munger
Podcasts
Building Berkshire 2.0 w/ Chamath Palihapitiya: Depending on who you ask in the world of software, investing and VC, Chamath is either a legend or a lunatic. Wherever you stand, there is much to be learned from how he thinks. An early employee of Facebook and a forerunner in the SPAC explosion, his investment moves and theories have helped build Billions of dollars worth of value. Pair this with his 2020 Social Capital Letter to Shareholders for more in-depth analysis.
Articles
The Endless Pursuit of Better: Students whose parents are among the top one percent economically are 77x more likely to attend an Ivy League university than those with parents in the bottom quintile. – Raj Chetty, Harvard Economist
What Expertise Do You Want? The next 7, 10, and 20 years are going to roll by, whether you are developing expertise or not. It’s up to you what expertise you have or not after that time has elapsed
Chris Dixon on How the Internet Is Built to Find the Best Business Models: The internet treats bad business models as defects and routes around them. Video game makers looked at their product expansively, as a bundle that included software, services, and add-ons, and then ran experiments to discover the optimal balance between free features that maximized viral marketing and paid features that maximized revenue.
Books
Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins: Scientific Advertising is a no-bull shit guide to getting others to buy what you are selling. Although it was written almost a century ago, some of the lessons are just as relevant today, specifically, the ideas of (1) selling something people want, (2) deeply understanding your audience and (3) only building for them. Don’t boil the ocean. Don’t try to appeal to everyone. Address the people you seek and them only.