Reading is Brain Food: Our investment in Fable
Our lives have changed drastically over the last year — from the ways we spend our time, to the ways we interact, to the ways we educate, even down to what we think about during the day. Work too has changed dramatically and now many companies are considering permanently changing their physical work structure to become distributed businesses and teams. One thing I’ve heard from every leader I’ve spoken with this past year is that they’re looking for ways to keep their team connected — while physically apart — so that people can do their best work and feel their best selves. So far we’ve seen Zoom happy hours and online CodeNames… we can do better.
Today we’re excited to announce our investment in Fable, the social reading platform founded by Padma Warrior. Fable allows readers to discover books and create or join Reading Clubs with friends, family, and colleagues. It is great to use as an individual but is even better when used to bring us together to connect around the simple, shared experience of reading something new. You can share notes, highlight favorite quotes, and start discussions right on the digital page or, if you prefer reading a hard copy, you can still join the Reading Clubs just as easily. In the past few months, thousands of people have been invited from the Fable waitlist and employers from Fortune 500s to small firms and startups have signed to engage their teams in something more lasting and productive.
The founder of Fable is Padma Warrior. Many in the tech industry are probably familiar with Padma and her career: She previously was the U.S. CEO of autonomous vehicle company NIO, CTO at Cisco and Motorola, and currently sits on the boards of Microsoft and Spotify. In addition to her phenomenally successful career spanning several of the most complex verticals in technology, she’s developed a deep passion for mental wellness and the power of reading. I first had the opportunity to meet Padma about six years ago, and when the opportunity came to work with her on Fable it was a very simple decision.
Padma had done her research before embarking on this new endeavor and encouraged me to do the same. As it turns out, it’s not hard to find interesting facts on the benefits of reading: Studies have found that 30 minutes of reading lowered blood pressure, heart rate, and feelings of psychological distress just as effectively as yoga and humor did. At The Mayo Clinic and other leading medical practices, doctors suggest reading as part of a regular sleep routine. A long-term health and retirement study concluded that people who read more than 3 1/2 hours every week were 23 percent likely to live longer than those who didn’t read at all. Reading is a behavior that nearly all people do every day, and it is a natural behavior to discuss and share. So while the publishing industry has undergone a massive shift in the last two decades, it remains astonishingly large — this past year, 70 percent of U.S. adults have read a book, 60 percent have a library card, and ~$13 billion was spent on new book sales. The number who have read a news article online, watched a documentary, or consumed other thought-provoking content, I would expect is close to 100 percent of Americans.
Fable also represents the promise of social networks at their best and I believe is a pioneering example of a new class of vertical social networks — ones that align affinity groups, gives autonomy and control to the individual, and minimizes detrimental behavior given the overarching platform structure. Most vertical social networks are hindered by growth because they are not naturally viral across large groups; not so with reading and reviews. Personally, my favorite Fable feature is book recommendations — they are not triggered by a simple algorithm that keys off an author or genre like everywhere else you might buy a new book, but instead are topically curated by writers and readers alike. This month’s newest Folios are curated by Wolfgang Puck (The Chef’s Table), Paulo Coelho (The Quest for Purpose), Naoise Dolan (Let’s Talk about Love), Tiffany Shlain (How to Stay Human), and Jeff Lawson (Think Like a Developer).
We couldn’t be more excited for this next chapter for Fable — learn more here if you want to start a Reading Club, bring Fable to your company or join an incredible team where reading great books is part of the job description. Or join me there! I hope we have the chance to read something together soon.
