What I read today — Aug12
Hello again!
I’m not sure about you, but I get serious FOMO when it comes to articles, podcasts and information in general. There’s simply so much out there to consume and feed into our brains, how will we ever keep up? I keep tabs open in my browser, I organize my bookmarks for things to read later, I’ve tested out Pocket in the past (didn’t like it for it’s lack of organization, at least at the time). There’s just so much.
But maybe that’s okay. Maybe we don’t need to read and consume everything. Maybe we just go about our day, focused on what sparks our interest most to feed our brain, not worrying too much about missing out… when you think about it, there will always be 100’s more to read on the same topics tomorrow.
So, that’s what I’ve been doing over the past couple of months: trying to not try to keep up with the information firehose. If an article sparks my curiosity bug, I try to read it asap. If it’ll be tremendously useful at some point, but not immediately applicable, then I save it for when its insights and information will be needed. Otherwise I skip it. I feel much happier in my routine, since I changed tactics.
How about you? How do you operate? Do you keep up? Do you manage your FOMO levels?
Enough from me, onto today’s articles.
#1 ARTICLE
This is the post that I never wanted to write. The post-mortem for Shipbeat. The company Joachim and I started to…medium.com
In this post, Kenneth Svenningsen discusses the journey of his now closed company, Shipbeat, and why they decided to shut down. I think we all appreciate when founders write these posts, as the community benefits so much from shared learnings (both good and bad). I thought this one was quite interesting, as he got into a bit of the details around the feasibility and viability limitations of the Shipbeat model. Kenneth’s post definitely highlights well that “in theory” and “in execution” are two very different things. Thanks for sharing Kenneth.
“Time is the most valuable asset we have as humans. The fact that our team has chosen to spend some of it working with us has been one of the biggest privileges, we have ever experienced. We are thankful for the trust that investors, team, and customers have shown us.”
#2 ARTICLE
If you have the time, this is an interesting (albeit complex for the non-technical, such as myself) piece by Steve Jurvetson at DFJ. In this post, he goes deep on the machine-learning company Nervana, the decision to sell to Intel and broad trends in the space. A key theme that I found interesting is the cross-domain applicability of machine learning hardware, software, tactics and talent.
“The advances in deep learning are domain independent. Google can hire and acquire talent and delight in their passionate pursuit of game playing or robotics. These efforts help Google build a better brain. The brain can learn many things. It is like a newborn human; it has the capacity to learn any of the languages of the world, but based on training exposure, it will only learn a few. Similarly, a synthetic neural network can learn many things.”
#3 ARTICLE
Some of our team and I were having a chat about what does it take to be an awesome investor. When I first started…www.dshen.com
David Shen of Launch Capital builds a useful list of the qualities of great investors, specifically those qualities that LPs should be looking for in investments. David’s thinking on the topic started back in 2006 after trying to raise a fund with a colleague, based on their UX/Product operating experience, and was unfortunately not successful. This was because, at the time, he didn’t have enough experience “managing investments.” This list is his distillation about what he believes the LPs meant by the experience required to be a good VC. In the end, though, he boils it all down to trust… if you have investors who trust you, you will be able to raise. A useful list, and a very key take-away.
“While you develop those qualities above, which can only enhance your standing with potential LPs, it is ultimately the building of trust that will get their commitments to let you invest on their behalf.”
#4 ARTICLE
This is one of a series of essays on what I’m calling The Next Economy, an economy in which we use technology not just…medium.com
For me, this is a pure “sounds interesting” article that I read simply because I wanted to expand my mind on the topic of macro economics. Tim O’Reilly, founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media — organizers of the Next:Economy Summit — is doing a series of essays on the factors that will affect how our economy will be shaped in the future. In this piece, Tim discusses the forces affecting the labour market in our evolving economy, and makes a strong case for reform. For me, this highlights how while directors of companies have a responsibility first to shareholders, there is an opportunity to think differently about how that responsibility can come to life, and the impact that a corporation can have on the broader world.
“Here is one of the failed rules of today’s economy: humans are expendable. Their labor should be eliminated as a cost whenever possible. This will increase the profits of a business, and richly reward investors. These profits will trickle down to the rest of society.”
Interestingly enough, Tim here has a number of good quotes on “in theory” vs “in practice”, which I highlighted as a take-away from Kenneth Svenningsen’s post above. At the very least, this article is worth it for those insights (from an economics perspective) alone… they include some deep thinking about Uber’s economic model.
Well, that’s it from me today. Hope you found these few articles interesting. As with the past couple of days, please definitely let me know your thoughts and opinions on these articles… as well as any feedback you have on the format.
Thanks! B
