The Curious (Aspiring) Cognoscente: Jay-Z’s Empire, Asymmetric Lives, and Learning About AI
October 19, 2023, Week 10
Our article this week looks at Jay-Z’s multi-billion dollar empire. Then we hear from Graham Weaver about how to build an asymmetric life by playing for the upside. Finally, we look at a gamification learning app for AI.
Readwise Quote
Sometimes, the 'right' next step or decision alludes to us. We don't know what to do or how we might make things better.
In these times, all we have to offer is our effort (that's a bit comforting, isn't it?). Articulately put by Churchill during the darkest days of WWII:
“I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. — Winston Churchill” — Erik Larson, The Splendid and the Vile
When in doubt, keep working.
Article
The $2.5 Billion Empire of Jay-z
Shawn Carter, aka Jay-Z, has parlayed what started as a music career into a multi-industry empire with businesses ranging from sports teams to venture capital investments to streaming services.
Here are a few takeaways:
- Rejection can lead to moats— Rejection forces you to make it on your own; it forces you to develop your skills faster since you don't have help. In the long run, doing it yourself can be a significant competitive advantage (think ownership retention) as you don't have to listen to others' inputs on what you should or shouldn't do. Warren Buffett has a great quote (talking about Jay-Z) around this topic: "The best moat you can have is your talent. They can't take it away from you."
- Compete and hustle — Competition brings out the best in you. To be the best during competition, you must put in the work and hustle. The article discusses putting yourself in situations where winning seems impossible and losing could be catastrophic. In these situations, you can bet you'll compete like your life depends on it. And to prepare for these situations, you better have hustled to be ready.
- Keep your hands in many cookie jars — Jay-Z is a mogul. I love his quote about involvement in many things: "I began to make more baskets the minute the first had a few eggs in it…" Apart from the practical benefit of diversifying your risk when involved in a lot, you also benefit from learning more, faster. Learnings from one pursuit can be applied to another, creating a flywheel spinning faster.
- Creativity processes—Jay-Z couldn't just sit down and write lyrics. He would have rhymes come to him throughout the day and write them down on the nearest paper or hold them in the corner of his mind for later. The creative process/routine has been interesting to me lately — especially on whether one can 'get better' at being creative or if you are born with it (the more I research, the more I believe you can get better at it). But it's different for every person. Jay-Z's style isn't the same as that of J. Cole, Steve Jobs, or JK Rowling. I plan to write about this more in a future newsletter or blog.
Podcast Episode
Last Lecture Series: "How to Live an Asymmetric Life" — Graham Weaver
If you have never listened to the full podcast I share, I really encourage you to listen to this one. It's only 30 minutes, and it's well worth the time. I'm sharing the main points; Weaver paints these points with powerful stories.
My (Weaver's) four takeaways (for living an asymmetric life):
- Do hard things — Changing our perception of doing 'hard things,' or being uncomfortable, is critical to creating the life you want to live. Things get worse before they get better. This is the scariest part about embarking on a new journey, whether a career move, relationship change, or significant personal decision. The steepest curve of the journey is the beginning, but most of that curve is just fear.
- Do your thing — Suffering is inevitable. Regardless of your decisions, things will happen, some in your control, others not, that lead to suffering. So why not choose to spend your time on something worth suffering for? Don't suffer working on something society says you should; you'll never win in life working towards someone else's dreams.
- Do it for decades — In a growth formula, you have the rate of growth (r) and the number of growth periods (n). The growth rate is important, but the real driver of change is the length of time spent growing. Results aren't linear when you do something for decades; results compound, leaving you with a quadratic growth curve. Think about steady rates of change that are manageable for years. Stick to it with a long enough runway, and you'll find yourself much farther than you could have expected.
- Write your story — 'How' is the killer of all great dreams. When thinking about a journey, put the story on paper. Develop the ideal scenario if execution is guaranteed to be successful. Then make it happen! Too often, we think about the practicalities and challenges of embarking on a journey rather than starting and addressing them on the way. As Weaver puts it, don't let 'not me, not now' get in the way of living an asymmetric life
Playing for the upside
.Many times, we (myself very much included) make the practical decision to protect our downside. But if we think about it, what's the worst outcome if things do not go our way? Most of the time, it's fairly minimal, maybe the loss of time or money or some embarrassment of the failure.
On the flip side, what's the upside? What if everything went perfectly? Isn't playing for the potential upside worth the risk of the downside? This week, how can you apply these principles to build a more asymmetric life?
Startup
aiLaMo is seeking to be the Duolingo for AI. Their app contains easily digestible AI courses with various challenges and game accomplishments.
Positioning
The rise of AI solutions has come with warnings about an expanding gap between those who leverage the technology for improved productivity and those who cannot develop the right skill set and are left behind.
The UI looks clean and easy to use. Gamification always makes learning more enjoyable as well — it seems easy to do a bit of learning every day, which is much better than spending a week in an online course or scrolling through YouTube videos. It appears to be a good entry point for an introduction to AI.
Questions
The intention is for those unfamiliar with AI solutions to use the game to learn more. But will populations who don't natively adopt AI tools be persuaded to use another app to learn a new technology?
Funding
They have not raised any outside funding.
An Idea, Learning, or Question
Today marks the end of H1 (half 1) for MIT, which means that Accounting Information for Decision Makers (great class) is over and I'm 25% done with grad school.
I'm left with feelings about whether I'm on track for what I wanted to accomplish in school. Some yes, some no, some goals have changed.
Two takeaways:
- Life seasons matter, but so does the long game— Two and a half months (since the beginning of my program) isn't long in the grand scheme of life. But in this season, it feels like a lot of time has gone by really fast. There's a balance between focusing on the season and playing the long game. Both are important, but maximizing one at the expense of the other isn't a good idea.
- Any time is a good time for reflection — Milestones, regardless of how big or small, are times for reflection. Being a quarter of the way done with school made me realize the importance of taking a step back to address how things are going. Too often, we get so caught up with just surviving and getting through the week, month, or season that we don't zoom out and see if we are progressing toward the things that matter in the long run (or maybe we only do this once a year, the last week of December).
I'm stepping back this week to see if I'm on track and if the 'track'' is still the route I want to be on.
Go be curious — until next time.
You can find a summary of the purpose of the Curious (Aspiring) Cognoscente here.
Have other interesting sources, ideas, quotes, articles, companies, or topics? I'd love your recommendations or to discuss them with you. Leave a comment or drop me a direct message.
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