Top internet resources that I found in 2019 (Part 1)
I published the top internet resources that I found in 2018 here. Since then, I decided to keep track of it on my Evernote and write some brief comment about it. I’ll plan to post part 2 probably at the end of the year.
There are 3 reasons why I keep track of this:
1- It helps me when I do my own personal review on the things that I learned and how much of it I actually apply. Knowledge is power but knowledge without action is useless
2- It helps me to keep track and re-read/watch/listen to the resources that I found useful. Sometimes, the knowledge is not directly applicable (or not a priority) to me at the time of consumption
3- It is a less time-consuming way for me to share it with others. Most of the time, I’ll post a screenshot of the articles that I read on my Instastory and people are asking me for the link which led me to re-Google the article to find the link.
So, here we go. These resources are arranged based on the chronological time of discovery:
The End of Economics? by Fareed Zakaria, CNN Host
I love a thought-provoking article. Fareed is arguing it’s time to include the human side of the equation into Economics. That human beings are rarely rational, let stopped pretending they are in our mathematical model. I believe Economists at Amazon would disagree with this!
Pmarca Guide to Personal Productivity by Marc Andreessen, A16Z Partner
Previously, I shared Sam Altman’s article on productivity and I try to learn more about it. I found out that I need to master productivity at a young age before I got too caught up with responsibilities that come as I grow older. Marc Andreessen has some great guide on this. I highly suggest you compliment it with Naval Ravikant’s podcast on “Be Too Busy to “Do Coffee”
Speaking about Naval, I highly recommend you check out his podcast. 5 minutes sound bite, that will make you think deeply on your life
A Helpful Guide to Reading Better by Farnam Street
I have a hypothesis and that is we don’t actually know how to perform routine things properly. You know things like reading, sitting, running, cooking, etc. We read books from cover to cover, slouching when sitting, injury-prone running style, and overcooking scramble egg! Here is some guidance on reading.
What the Hell is Going On? By David Perrell, host North Star Media
This is a very long article but I like the way David model the technology disruption. The explosion of information has undermined and obsoleted the 20th-century organizational model. David dive into commerce, education, and politics to model it where big brands are losing market share, big universities are going bankrupt and big political parties are splintering and losing their control over the political narrative. In their wake, small businesses who connect with audiences and serve the unique needs of consumers are thriving; digitally-native universities who can educate, entertain, accredit, and find work for students will blossom; likewise, politicians who can bypass the media and connect with voters directly are commanding attention, influencing policy and stepping into office.
The Surprisingly Charming Science of Your Gut by Giulia Enders
You’re what you eat, you’re what you read. Giulia explained that the thing that you eat not only affects your physical but also your psychology. Your guts actually send more signal to your brain than the other way around. Time to eat more healthy foods!
Death by PowerPoint: The Slide That Killed 7 People by James Thomas
As a consultant, we’re trained to build PowerPoint with a storyline. But, most people are not trained that way. Sometimes, it kills… literally kills people. One of the reasons why the Columbia rocket crashed was that the engineers don’t know how to use slide effectively. Let’s consider using prose instead(see below)
Writing Docs at Amazon by Scott
I love to study Amazon’s culture! One of the unique culture about Amazon is that they don’t use PowerPoint slide. They write prose. Writing prose in a 6-page memo forces us to think hard and that’s what exactly what management should do. They should think hard on what needs to be done before they instruct their direct reports to do. Scott explained how Amazon does it.
How to Write Email with Military Precision by HBR
As mentioned above, I believe we don’t know how to properly do our routine. Including sending an email. This is how the military does it. To be honest, I read this years ago and only applied it occasionally. But, I would like to apply this on a consistent basis in the future
What Seven Years at Airbnb Taught Me About Building a Business by Lenny Rachitsky
I love to study organizational design and AirBnB is one the best case studies. Here is an insider view on how AirBnB works from one of their first few PMs. Culture eats strategy for breakfast! Rinse and repeat!
Making Uncommon Knowledge Common
You probably heard about Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Sergey Brin, etc. But, you probably never heard about Rich Barton (at least I don’t). Rich Barton built not one, two but three unicorns including Expedia ($18.6B), Zillow ($8.8B), and Glassdoor (Said to have been acquired for $1.6B). This article explained his playbook.
Scaling a Non-Profit, startup style by TechCrunch
What happened when you gather VCs and founders together to build a non-profit? They’ll build it like a startup that creates gigantic impacts in the industry. I have huge respect at All Raise and the impacts that they created supporting women founders and VCs!
11 Lessons I Learned After Reading 1,000+ Profiles of Successful People by Polina Marinova
I read this a couple of years ago and it popped up again in my Nuzzel (the app that I used to filter news). Polina Marinova outlined lessons learned after reading 1000 profiles of successful people. Sometimes, I just need a reminder that what I’m doing is in the right direction despite moving into a different direction from what the majority of people do
How To Be Successful by Sam Altman
Speaking about successful people, Sama wrote a great article on how to achieve such outlier success based on his experiences meeting thousands of founders at Y Combinator. This is gold!
How I explain the stock market vs the economy by Josh Brown
I learned from Reddit that we need to use the “Explain like I’m 5(ELI5)” concept to see if we truly master the subject. Reformed Broker showed this in practice when he explained the differences between the stock market and the economy using a great analogy- walking your dog. I’m still amazed at how simple his analogy is!
Ryan Caldbeck’s Twitter Thread on Pivot
I have great respect on Ryan Caldbeck but this thread bring it to another whole new level. Pivot is freaking hard, physically and emotionally. The honesty and transparency of this story is just amazing! Ryan tells us how he pivoted his business. Pivoting at the seed stage is hard, but when you did it at Series C, that’s a huge pivot! Also huge respect for his care towards the layoff employees. Most people will do the easy task, fire people and focus on putting out the fire, but not Ryan. Amazing story!
How To Solve America’s $100 Trillion Problem Of Wealth Inequality
This article made me reminiscing of my finance class. “The function of a corporation is not to maximize profit, it is to maximize the long-term intrinsic value per share!” I think my professor repeat that over and over again in the class, tests and final exam. He even gave us the tickets to Berkshire Hathaway Shareholder meeting to embrace it. This article kinda sends us the same message. Perhaps we need to revisit capitalism and come back to the basic- “There is only one valid purpose of a corporation: to create a customer. Only one. Making money is the result, not the goal of a corporation.”
One-on-Ones Are My Most Valuable Meetings; Here’s How I Run Them by Mathilde Collins, Front CEO
I’ll consider Mathilde Collins as one of my virtual mentors and go to person when it comes to leadership. 1:1 meeting is vital and Mathilde explains how to do it properly. Do check out all of her other articles too on Medium!
Building Amazing Teams, Keith Rabois in an interview with Jason Lamkin
I once learned that a CEO has 3 main jobs- Set vision and mission aka direction for the company, make sure there’s money in the bank, hire and retain great talent. Here, Jason Lamkin interviewed Rabois on how to build great teams. I love the fact that Rabois outline some tactical steps in the interview, which is not a surprise given the fact that he’s COO on rocket ship companies
A16Z Podcast: Innovating in Bets with Annie Duke
I’m a big fan of Annie Duke since I found her interview in Farnam Street podcast. Annie Duke discussed some tactical steps on removing bias in our thinking. I love the fact that you can actually quantify your thinking. The hardest part is to make it part of your habits to “think in bets”. One of the easiest tactical steps that I learned from this episode is instead asking “are you sure”, try to ask “how sure are you”. That way, it forces us to quantify our decisions.
As mentioned above, I love to study organizational design. Amazon is one of the companies that I study the most. Here is a story on how they come out with Amazon Prime, an industry changer! Bezos is very good at thinking long-term, customer-centric, and being innovative. The best thing is he managed to embed that culture within Amazon and it’s self-reinforcing. Because to Amazon employee, it’s still “Day 1" and “Day 2” is stasis or worse the reversal of the “Day 1” followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death!
