Category: reading list

Benjamin on the bare essence of consulting. 

Money, status and fraud, this story has it all. 

Ali on the hottest financial instruments – ISAs.   

Lambda school looks to expand into nursing. 

Sam on why writing, curation and sharing are a crucial aspect of Gatsby’s culture.

Knowing investors and their pet theories is a good way of getting a first meeting.  

Why making cognitively demanding tasks like driving simpler might lead to more accidents. 

Leadership and Leadering. 

Leveraging cold emails and tweets to get lucky.

Excellent insight into the SV mindset courtesy Sar. Talks about the SV mono-culture, competitive nature, network effects, social-proof and what it means to have a prepared mindset. 

There is an approach called “working backwards” that is widely used at Amazon, according to Ian McAllister (@ianmcall), General Manager at Amazon.

“We work backwards from the customer, rather than starting with an idea for a product and trying to bolt customers onto it.”

This is an excellent example of the briefcase technique and its subsequent result. Vedika worked as a fantasy angel investor on weekends and nights to practice for her future role at the Weekend fund.  

The last article is probably not the best place to start reading someone’s work but this snippet blew my mind. Worth reading for the recommendations section alone. 

An excerpt: 

When you practice a craft you become skilled and knowledgeable in two areas: the stuff the craft produces, and the processes used to create it. And the second kind of expertise accumulates much faster. I call this the turpentine effect. Under normal circumstances, the turpentine effect only has minor consequences. At best, you become a more thoughtful practitioner of your craft, and at worst, you procrastinate a little, shopping for turpentine rather than painting. But there are trades where tool-making and tool-use involve exactly the same skills, which has interesting consequences. Programming, teaching, writing and mechanical engineering are all such trades.

How idleness as a response is programmed into ants and makes for an efficient digging operation. 

Great breakdown on the unit economics of Lyft and Uber. 

Quick read on what makes for a good engineering culture at Spotify. 

Lessons from Paul Graham.

vgr explores stress reactions of the domestic cozy generation.

The effects of meeting room design on occupancy.

Identity and marketing. 

Some great insights into the behemoth that Amazon’s HR department is and Beth Galetti’s role in shaping the culture.

Fun Fact: “Amazon now has a global full- and part-time workforce of 647,000, which is 50% more people than Alphabet, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft combined. Among U.S. companies, only Walmart, with 2.3 million, employs more people, but Walmart’s total head count hasn’t budged significantly in years. By contrast, Amazon employs more than six times as many workers as it did when Galetti joined. It has been adding an average of 337 people a day and currently has 28,000 open positions.”

Reid on how to identify learners. 

Density.io uses depth sensor for tracking people flow and optimizing office space. Mark talks about how this is accomplished and other novel use cases.

Eugene explains Amazon’s laser focus on free cash flow and how that translates into strategy. 

Exploring generational divides on camera-first platforms. Native users are more comfortable with juggling multiple identities compared to oldies. 

Funded by an all-star team of investors, Clearbanc is an iteration on the Capital-as-a-service model pioneered by Social Capital. Incidentally, Chamath, the founder of Social Capital is one of the investors in Clearbanc. 

A brief summary of the research that indicates depression being an inflammatory disease that can be helped by improving diet, dental hygiene, sleep and exercise. 

Brad explains the value of writing on your website.

A great post on how complexity rules everything around us. 

Lessons from scaling Uber in Asia. 

Started by Chamath, fbFund was an attempt to fund ideas that could build on top of social platforms like Facebook. Julia writes about patience, early stage investing, backing people and the importance of diversity.

Finally got around to reading this. A masterclass in growth and identifying barriers to growth.

How to build credibility, one interaction at a time.