Top internet resources that I uncovered in 2018

I was inspired to write this article after Leo Polovets from Susa Ventures tweeted this:

Credit: Leo’s Twitter

Indeed, the internet gives me access to great people and their wisdom although I’m far away from them. An advantage that my parent’s generation do not have when they’re young. As I reflected my 2018 years, I reviewed some of the things that I learned throughout the year and below are the best articles and podcast episodes that I learned from.

To give you some context, here is how I wrote this article. I scrolled down all my tweets as I tweeted most of the great articles that I read. Besides, I also went through the podcast episodes that I saved in 2018. Then, I first wrote the part on best podcast episodes I listened to in 2018, but I found that it’s too long. So, I decided to write a sentence or two for the part on best articles that I read in 2018 and move it on top. That way this article will not end up too long and bored you.

Without further ado, below are some of the best articles and podcast episodes that I got from the internet throughout 2018.

Top articles I read in 2018:

Why Twitter is dope and how to use it by Nikhil Krishnan, CBInsights

• Twitter is best used if you’re into investment and startups. Nikhil made an awesome deck with actionable tactics on how to fully utilize your Twitter account to get great insights

David Perrel’s Twitter thread on career advice

• There’s plenty of career advice out there but I believe this Twitter thread focuses on signals instead of noises. David is the podcast host of North Star

The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel

• I enjoy Morgan Housel’s writing, and this is one of his best articles. It makes me wonder why they don’t combine psychology and finance at the business school?

Suhail’s Twitter thread on getting your first 100 customers

• Reid Hoffman, founders of LinkedIn mentioned that “you don’t start with 100 million users, you start with a few. So, stop thinking big and start thinking small”. Here are some of the great tactics to get your first few customers

Andrew Chen’s Twitter thread on Marketplace

• You say, “Hey Alexa, find the best articles on Marketplace startups for me to read” and you got this awesome Twitter thread on Marketplace! Andrew Chen, General Partner at A16Z is the subject matter expert on the topic

The 30 Best Pieces of Advice for Entrepreneurs in 2018

• First Round Review is the gold of the internet and I love it. One of the best advice in this article is how to measure AND optimize Product-Market Fit, PMF where Rahul Vohra from Superhuman mathematically break down PMF (instead of using your intuition as most VCs advised)

Paul Graham’s essay on “Default alive vs default dead”

• This is an old article that I found in 2018. Old but gold, Paul G outlined the importance of knowing if your company is default alive or default dead as your strategy revolves around that default

A compilation of Amazon’s shareholder’s letters since its IPO

• It’s a compulsory read for business students, CEOs, and Board of Directors!

Sam Altman on productivity

• I’m at the time of my life where most of my peers showing how busy they are on their social media. It makes me wonder how we should think about productivity. @sama from Y Combinator has some great insights here

New college endowment tax won’t help low-income students, here’s how it could

• I enjoy some public policy paper and this article from Brookings is quite interesting given the trillion dollars student loan problem. It makes me thinking do colleges really align with their student’s interests or they just make money from tuition fees and endowment returns? On another note, I found that Lambda School has some “radical” way to solve this alignment problem

Top podcast episodes that I enjoy in 2018:

Kids are worth it, Barbara Coloroso- Farnam Street by Shane Parish

• At the time of this writing, I’m not married and don’t have any kids, but this podcast episode makes me consider having one. It’s amazing how much we thought we know about something simply because we’ve been doing it, but the fact is we actually don’t know the proper techniques of it. For instances, being in a relationship doesn’t mean you know how to love (Please read the “5 love languages” book if you don’t believe in me). The same goes for parenting. Having kids doesn’t mean that you know how to parent. But afraid not, Barbara has plenty of brilliant tips on parenting (and I would argue how to manage your employees) in this podcast episodes. I believe mastery comes from repetition over a long period of times and Barbara had done it through her experiences of being a teacher, educational consultants, working with foster kids, and a nun! So, if you think bribing and punishing your kids is good behavioral training for them, think again and listen to this episode. You’ll be surprised!

Malcolm Gladwell debates Adam Grant- Revisionist History by Malcolm Gladwell

• If you’re a big fan of self-help books, you probably know both authors. One of the things that I like about podcast is that it allows me to dive into a conversation between two smart people (hopefully it will make me smarter over time). The conversation between these two brilliant people is worth a listen! It’s so funny and intellectuals which are a rare combination.

Active versus Passive- The Curious Investors by AQR Capital

• This is another podcast episode where I was able to hear a great discussion between two industry titans and intellectuals, Jack Boggle (RIP Jack), founders of Vanguard, a firm that offers index funds with USD 5 trillion in AUM and Cliff Asness, founders of AQR capital, the quantitative hedge funds with USD 200 B in AUM. One thing that surprised me was how similar active and passive investing are despite its never-ending debates. Besides, I noticed that most successful investors are the students of knowledge and making money is not their primary goals. Now, I’m looking forward to reading AQR’s latest book “20 for Twenty: Selected Papers from AQR Capital Management”, a collection of AQR’s top 20 research paper for its 20th years anniversary soon.

Top 10 commandments of startup success- Masters of Scale by Reid Hoffman

• If you have the time to listen to all of the Masters of Scale podcast episode, I suggest you do so. But, if you don’t, this is an hour summary of the podcast episodes which contains tons of wisdom on how to manage your company. It will give you insights from the like of Brian Chesky (Airbnb), Eric Schmidt (Alphabet), Sheryl Sandberg (Facebook), Reed Hastings (Netflix), and various other great founders as the guest host, Tim Ferris breakdown the podcast’s episodes. One thing that I learned is that having alignment is vital in your company. Align your company vision with everything including recruiting, fundraising, growth, acquisitions, culture, etc. Most problems tend to occur due to misalignment within your organization.

Naval Ravikant- Farnam Street by Shane Parish

• Where do I start with Naval Ravikant? There are so many pearls of wisdom to unpack in this 2-hour podcasts. I highly recommend you to compliment this episode with Naval’s Periscope sessions (First episode here and the second episode here) where he answered questions from Twitter and Tim Ferriss’ podcast interview with him. I’ll leave with one of Naval’s quote in the podcast, “the ability to learn, the means of learning, the tools of learning, are abundant and infinite. It’s the desire that’s incredibly scarce.” Now, go and uncover that wisdom in this episode.

Savneet Singh- Invest Like the Best by Patrick O’Shaughnessy

• If you know me, you know that I’m a big fan of Berkshire Hathaway, BRK which don’t really invest in software companies. But this episode opens my mind that BRK’s investing style can actually be applied to software companies in which Savneet’s Tera Holdings is working on. Besides, this episode allows me to uncover the other software version of BRK like investors such as Robert Smith, Vista Equity Partners and one would argue Chamath Palihapitiya, Social Capital.

Patrick Collison- Farnam Street by Shane Parish

• Patrick is the co-founder of Stripe, the company that provides the online payment infrastructure for the internet. I didn’t know Patrick before this podcast episode and I’m thankful that I found him here. He is simply one of the most genius persons I ever knew! I’m not surprised that brilliant guy like him is able to attract great talent to work at Stripe which includes Claire Hughes Johnson, Stipe’s COO (Check out her interview with Harry Stebbings here). Last but not least, don’t forget to check out Patrick’s AMA on Reddit.

BONUS: David Rubenstein Show: Jeff Bezos at The Economic Club of Washington

• This is not a podcast episode per se. I highlight it here because it’s a superb conversation between Jeff Bezos of Amazon and David Rubenstein from Carlyle Group. Jeff emphasizes Amazon’s Day 1 mentality and his laser focus on customers. He also explained why he bought the Washington Posts. I love the fact that he breakdown his decision-making process in this interview.

Bonus 2: Here is my top 10 business book that I read recently: https://twitter.com/IqbalROfficial/status/1031034116211335169

Bonus 3: Need more book list, here’s a great Twitter thread for you

The internet democratizes almost everything. It gives me access to various brilliant persons and I learn a lot from them. The above resources are just the tip of the iceberg of the knowledge and wisdom that you can get from the internet. As Leo mentioned above, it’s the best time to be alive if you’re a curious and perpetual learner!