Hi All,
Hope you all are having a good week and are able to enjoy a somewhat socially distanced summer (which I sure hope includes a good BBQ!) Iām kinda getting used to working from home at this point. I wonder though about new hires. What would the experience of starting off completely remote feel like? How can you build trust? How can you connect with your peers or managers if youāve never met them?
Anyway, lets get startedā¦ As always if you enjoyed reading this please share (or subscribe) if you are a first time visitor ā¦
Expectations and the Pygmalion effect
From Wikipedia:Ā
The Pygmalion effect, or Rosenthal effect, is the phenomenon whereby others' expectations of a target person affect the target person's performance.The effect is named after the Greek myth of Pygmalion, a sculptor who fell in love with a statue he had carved, or alternately, after the psychologist Robert Rosenthal. Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson, in their book, applied the idea to teachers' expectations of their students affecting the students' performance, a view that has been undermined partially by subsequent research
The RISC-V to ARM - From ARK-Invest
If you read my article on Building Moats this is an example of of counter-positioning since it is free (oh and also disruption theory)
From Ark:Ā
RISC-V could be the fastest growing computer chip standard in history. In just five years since the creation of the RISC-V foundation, more than 500 members have signed up, including the Whoās Who of the semiconductor industry, ranging from Huawei to Nvidia, as shown below.
RISC-Vās primary appeal is its open source ecosystem. Just as Linux made UNIX technology free and ubiquitous, RISC-V aims to do the same for computer hardware. Already, companies have built CPUs using RISC-V technology and open-sourced them to the community. Every Nvidia GPU today ships with a tiny RISC-V microcontroller onboard. Western Digital is moving all of its products to RISC-V processors. Being open and free has made RISC-V the most obvious choice among low-end and power-efficient applications. While it may not disrupt ARM or Intel overnight, āfreeā RISC-V could become the most disruptive force in chip design. RISC-V should debut in IoT and embedded applications this year and move upmarket to phones and servers during the next five years.Ā
From Wikipedia:
The Matthew effect of accumulated advantage, Matthew principle, or Matthew effect for short, is sometimes summarized by the adage "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer".Ā
The concept is applicable to matters of fame or status, but may also be applied literally to cumulative advantage of economic capital. In the beginning, Matthew effects were primarily focused on the inequality in the way scientists were recognized for their work. However, Norman Storer, of Columbia University, led a new wave of research. He believed he discovered that the inequality that existed in the social sciences also existed in other institutions.
On reading tips - the Barbell from Pmarca
The thing I've tried to do the last few years is really ābarbellā the inputs. I basically read things that are either up to this minute or things that are timelessā¦
From Wikipedia:
The Lindy effect is a theory that the future life expectancy of some non-perishable things like a technology or an idea is proportional to their current age, so that every additional period of survival implies a longer remaining life expectancy. Where the Lindy effect applies, mortality rate decreases with time.
On Writing from David Perell
Writing shows you how little you know about topics you thought you were an expert on. Create your own luck by writing online. Tell people what youāre working on, be open about your goals, and teach others what you learn. If you canāt communicate an idea clearly, you havenāt written about it enough.Iāve yet to meet an original thinker who doesnāt spend a lot of time alone.ā
Easy reading is hard writing.
On The Amazon ecosystem - I hope it is readable. It was the best I could do:
COVID-19 Reads this week
COVID-19 and startup sentiment - The survey answers the following questions:Ā
Valuations ā What are actual tech startup valuations looking like now, several months into the pandemic?
Zoom Investing ā Will VCs make investments over Zoom, without meeting Founders face to face?
Remote Plans ā How do VCs and Founders really feel about funding or operating companies that are fully remote, going forward?
Hiring & Compensation Shifts ā To what extent has hiring compensation changed, if at all?
Grading the Government ā How would VCs and Founders grade the Federal Governmentās handling of the pandemic?
Pace of New Investments ā At what rate are VCs investing today, compared to pre-COVID-19?
Revenue Breakdown ā Which tech markets are seeing significant revenue gains vs. revenue losses?
Dating in a COVID world
Nilay Patel and Elie Seidman (Tinder CEO) talk about dating during a pandemic. The key striking point for me was the below IRL comment.Ā
Digital natives are used to fortnite, discord, houseparty, live (on portals) and itās not a substitute for their lives. It is their lives
The Hertz Saga
A good read on what is happening with Hertz. It is just pure gambling. See this article from Bloomberg and Alex Dancoās take on this
From the article:Ā
Just to restate how funny this is: Hertz is granted permission, by their own bankruptcy judge, to sell stock in their company which has already declared bankruptcy, because due to weird mojo in the universe, thereās a small army of reddit trolls playing chicken with each other and it just might save the company. Financial Twitter goes crazy, and (of course!) people start bidding up stocks of other bankrupt companies.
Worthy reads of the week
Great read on working, living, and starting a business in Japan
From the article:Ā
Donāt have a wife? You might quite reasonably think āI donāt have time to even think about that.ā Donāt worry ā the company will fix your social calendar for you. It is socially mandatory that your boss, in fulfillment of his duties to you, sees that you are set up with a young lady appropriate to your station. He is likely to attempt to do this first by matching you with a young lady in your office. There are, at all times, a number of unattached young ladies in your office. Most of them choose to quit right about when they get married or have children. š¤Æš¤·š¼āāļø
A definition of good retention and some benchmarksĀ from Casey Winters
9 interesting permanent assumptions from Morgan Housel
My favorite one from the article:Ā
Knowing there will be a reversion to the mean does not mean you know when things will revert. Unsustainable things can sustain for a long time, because of incentives and the power of storytelling that turns nonsense into influential action.
There you go.. forget humans weāve taken away privacy from animals
With an Internet of Animals, Scientists Aim to Track and Save Wildlife
From the article:Ā
The science of wildlife tracking, known as bio-logging, has come a long way in recent years. In the 1990s, researchers were still tracking large mammals using devices the size of lantern batteries. The technology has grown smaller since then, but many collars and tags are still too big for some three-quarters of the worldās wild creatures.
The Newsletter Boom : Substackās CEO explains why weāre all obsessed with newsletters now
I do hope the below is true for each and every one of you :)Ā
From the article:Ā
That's a deep question. It comes back to developing a level of trust with the author. You get this feeling that I trust what the author will say, and they will have things that are interesting and relevant to me. I know that seems sort of hopelessly broad, but that dynamic works for people who are reading a business-focused newsletter about investing all the way to religious comedy. It's just a wide range.
The path to product leadership
A good read on mapping the 12 skills required for product leadership
The newest e-commerce marketplace in town : Curated
Curated: Expert Shopping Advice, Online
9 part (short reads) series on Apple in China:Ā
Part 1 introduces the essay series.Ā
Part 2 explains Appleās product-zeitgeist fit in China.Ā
Part 3 looks at product localization.Ā
Part 4 looks at Appleās services in China and relationship with Tencent.Ā
Part 5 looks at the complexities of operating in China.Ā
Part 6 and Part 7 look at Appleās compliance efforts in respect of the App Store and iCloud respectively.Ā
Part 8 looks at Appleās investment in DiDi.Ā
Part 9 concludes with lessons from Appleās experience in China.
START HERE : Apple's Success in China (Part 1): A Notable Exception ā Distilling Frenzy
An interesting read on Thielās investing philosophy and extends into Girardās mimetic philosophy : The Gospel According to Peter Thiel
From the article:Ā
Simply put, Girard holds that human desire is rooted in an obsessive form of imitation. We want not what we should want, but what we see others as having, and thus deem āworthy.ā Human relations are fundamentally predicated on this mimetic desire, which can lead us to harm one another in rivalrous conflict. We resent those who have what we think we wantābut we want what we do because those whom we resent have it.
Serendipity and Shopping
From the article:Ā
Much of legacy e-commerce is based on the conventional search-based, transactional model. But this is increasingly not how most people prefer to shop, either online or offline. Aside from certain shopping use cases that are truly intent-based (e.g. you are out of toilet paper or pasta and need to replenish) much of shopping in the physical world is actually quite serendipitous. Imagine spotting a nice dress while passing by a shop window or telling a friend about a bargain. Pinduoduo integrates the social aspects of shopping, the interactivity of the process between friends and between shopper and sales assistant, into the user experience.
The professional class and what it means...Bullshit Jobs (the book) also talks about this:Ā Losing the Narrative: The Genre Fiction of the Professional Class
From the article:Ā
In 1940, 14.9 percent of college students earned an A, while 35 percent earned a C. By 2013, 45 percent of students earned an A, while only 14 percent earned a C. Rampant grade inflation is the result of a system that cannot articulate a purpose for education other than to get good grades. Itās just a rebrand of what it means to be average for people who need collegeās credentialing power.
Yet even while admitting that toil is inescapable, it is still obvious that most white-collar work today is particularly bleak and meaningless. Office life increasingly resembles a mental factory line. The podcast is just talk radio for white-collar workers, and its popularity is evidence of how mind-numbing work has become for most.
āPlaying the gameā is almost like an overlay on top of this attitude. The idea is that personal ambition puts the bureaucrat in charge. Bureaucrats always feel that they are āin on the game,ā and so develop a false sense of certainty about the world, which sorts them into two groups: the cynics and the neurotics. Cynics recognize the nonsense, but think itās necessary for power. The neurotics, by conĀtrast, are earnest go-getters who confuse the nonsense with actual work
A good take on Lemonade (the insurance company) from Bryne Hobart : Lemonade's S-1: Solving the Market for Lemons
From the article:Ā
Lemonade was last valued at $2bn, or around 100x their current gross profit run-rate. There are parts of their model that are really impressive; the underwriting model is solid, their marketing is top-notch, and their growth is undeniable. Theyāve grown by expanding a market; 90% of their buyers are buying a new renterās insurance policy rather than replacing an existing one.
Thank you for reading. Stay safe! Be well. If you enjoyed reading this please share ..