How to figure out what you need to know?
One of the most important meta-skills for an entrepreneur is learning. An important ancillary skill is figuring out what you need to know. After all, in any given day or week, entrepreneurs will make hundreds of small decisions on domains ranging from people management to managing merge requests.
In this blog post, I want to share general guidance on information sources I’ve found valuable to understand the technology industry as a whole as how to build and maintain domain expertise relevant to your company.
So… where should I begin?
First, it’s important to appreciate that it takes time to develop situational awareness.
Having said that, I think it’s helpful to group information sources into accomplishing one of two goals:
- Staying aware of technology industry trends (short-term)
- Building an analytical toolkit and shared cultural references (long-term)
Staying aware of technology industry trends
News
- Techmeme — high-quality objective news aggregation great for skimming
- Techcrunch — the de facto standard for tech news
- The Information (paid) — industry insider news, gossip, and rumors
Newsletters
- Stratechery — Ben Thompson (paid) — daily dose technology strategy
- Benedict’s Newsletter — Benedict Evans — a survey of interesting news and blogs
- Term Sheet — Fortune Magazine — daily updates on tech funding trends
Podcasts
- This Week In Startups — Jason Calacanis (if you’re looking for a great episode to start, I highly recommend this one featuring Superhuman CEO Rahul Vohra describing quantitatively how to find product-market fit)
- A16z podcast — snippets of information ranging from portfolio company interviews to interviews with leaders
- YC podcast — snippets of information ranging from portfolio company interviews to interviews with leaders
- Internet Trends Report — Mary Meeker — a mammoth slide deck reviewing all of the macro-trends investors in tech are paying attention to.
Building an analytical toolkit and shared cultural references
Blogs
- Paul Graham (http://www.paulgraham.com/)
- Marc Andreessen (http://blog.pmarca.com/)
Books
- High Output Management — Andrew S. Grove — A guidebook for everything from how to run meetings to how to build metrics for a company. A must-read for all CEOs
- Only the Paranoid Survive — Andrew S. Grove — An insightful perspective on how to think about corporate strategy from a leader who did one of the biggest pivots of all time: from memory to processors.
- The Hard Thing About Hard Things — Ben Horowitz — A discussion of all of the soft questions that most CEOs don’t have tactical guidance on, e.g. how to reward the loyalty of early team members while balancing the need of the company to grow
- Zero to One: Notes on startups, or How to Build the future — Peter Thiel — A refreshing perspective from Silicon Valley’s leading contrarian on how companies create economic value.
- “Why Software Is Eating The World” — Marc Andreessen — This essay introduced the idea before it became a truism. Netscape Founder and a16z Founding General Partner argues that software will become core to every industry.
How do I figure out what I need to know for my company?
I’ve found it helpful to ask three questions to help identify which sources of information are particularly relevant to my company.
- Where do customers for my product obtain their news?
- Who are the key thought-leaders in my space?
- Who are my current and future competitors?
Depending on the answers to those three questions, you will have a variety of sources ranging from Twitter and LinkedIn (to follow thought leaders) to enterprise IT channel news (Channel Reseller News).
In the case of current and future competitors, I’ve found it help to set 3 types of alerts: Google alerts for my own company and competitors, Seeking Alpha alerts for investor commentary on competitors, and Crunchbase alerts to stay on top of funding updates.
A final note: after identifying what you need to know, it’s important to build habits to absorb information. Are you auditory learner or are you a visual learner? Do you tend to read in the mornings or in the evenings?
Speaking for myself, perhaps the most valuable habit I have is reading news for 45 minutes every morning and sneaking in podcasts for interstitial times when I am on the go. If I see something interesting, I’ll make sure to bookmark it on Twitter or add it a OneNote that I use to track daily notes at work.
