Hi All,
For folks who are in the US, I hope you had a restful break! For all its flaws and challenges, I love the United States of America. As a young kid watching American movies with scenes of the sun kissed skies, living in the United States was all I could dream about. It may be hard to see this but independence is the key to each of us being our very best. So a hat tip and a salute to a country that allows each and every one of us to give it our best shot. Needless to say I hope you had some fun times grilling! God bless America! Forever!
Given that this week was a longer weekend my curation game is a little bit off so bear with me! As always if you liked this please share. While I enjoy, strike that, LOVE getting this ready for you each week, the more people that read it, the better!
PS : Lots did happen in tech this week and one of the more interesting things was Uber+Postmates (which I have a lot of thoughts/comments on and will uhh pen soon)
On Apps
To start off with, I have a question for you. I read a LNKD post by Sachin Rekhi that asked for the top 5 apps that people use. Mine were:
Pocket (easy to save links, remove ads, format and make content consistent)
Wealthfront (continuous trading without me thinking and not needing an advisor)
Wikipedia (knowledge at my fingertips - OH MY!)
Slack (the redesigned slack makes it easy to keep a track of conversations, tasks, activities etc)
Product Hunt (Randomly staying on top of all the cool creativity we have in our world)
What are your top 5 Apps on your smartphone?
On Life lessons from David Cancel
My favorite one is below the tweet :
2/ * Read every day. It doesn't matter what. It doesn't matter if you "finish the book". Just read.
PSA on Masks
PSA (assuming this is accurate) but what we do know is that you wear a mask to protect others and the same way round. Masks please!
On 5G from the WSJ : White House Considers Broad Federal Intervention to Secure 5G Future
The below paints a very weak picture of the 5G future of America. America should consider (privately or government) investing in Nokia.
This week’s dozen:
One thing you’ll start to notice is that more of the links that I share are less mainstream authors and more just writers (a lot more Substack!) This is good! There are a lot of smart folks out there!
Fantasy merger between Airbnb and Zillow : Zillbnb
An interesting take on how data on short term rentals can affect the long term house pricing. The argument that I have though is, in the long run this can affect long term prices because a neighborhood becomes less desirable if all the neighborhood has are Airbnb properties.
Building for Pro consumers : Rahul Vohra (Superhuman) and his experiences building for a pro consumer : a16z Podcast: Building Products for Power Users
In the book “Monetizing Innovation,” the author, Madhavan, advocates for developing pricing alongside product in a way that supports the positioning that you’ve just come up with. Now, he covers a lot of ways to do this, and we used one of the easiest methods, which is the Van Westendorp price sensitivity meter.
In late 2015, we asked 100 of our earliest users these questions. Number one, at what price would you consider Superhuman to be so expensive that you just wouldn’t buy it? Number two, what price would you consider Superhuman to be priced so low that you would feel the quality wouldn’t be very good, and that would be concerning? Number three, at what price would you consider Superhuman to be starting to get expensive so that it is not out of the question, but you would have to give some thought to buying it and you still would? And number four, at what price would you consider Superhuman to be a bargain, a great buy for the money?
When my mom put me through tutor lessons when I was a kid — piano, ballet, drawing, figure skating, you name it — my dad would accuse them of being a scam. When my mom signed me up for math competitions, my dad would say these constructs are designed to deprive children of their curiosity. When my mom encouraged me to be a “sweet, nice Chinese girl” who marries well and early, my dad would remind me of the responsibility of pushing the edge of human knowledge, to give more than I take, while still hoping that I marry well and early. It’s as if they’ve played by the rules to be responsible for my happiness and success, but they never truly believed in anything that’s been prescribed, and are left unexplained.
Apple, Landlords, and the Revolt Against Monopolies
Rent seeking : the revolt against physical and virtual “rents”. An interesting take on App Stores vs Landlord rent seeking behavior
Why Software is More Profitable Than Content
Which brings me back to the introduction of this article: content exists to help people make sense of the current state of their world, to remind us of important truths, or to make us feel something.
The first one is ephemeral because the world changes. The latter two are ephemeral because once we’ve consumed a piece of content, we move on. We have an innate impulse to seek novelty. We get bored of predictability. And so humans need to be reminded of what to do and why we should do it. We need context.
This contextualization still can’t be done with computers, so content businesses must employ people to create that context for their customers. If it could be done by computers, we’d call it a software company rather than a content company.
An internal look at notPetya and Mersk. Brilliantly described and scary how companies take their security. Guilty here as well, back in the day we were so busy sometimes that testing critical CVE’s took a lower priority. Of course the other thing is most of this was onPrem unlike today!
Apple, Big Sur, and the rise of Neumorphism
When you boil it down, NEUMORPHISM is a focus on HOW LIGHT MOVES in three-dimensional space.
Quants Sound Alarm as Everyone Chases Same Alternative Data
Spending on alternative data has increased. But has the value the company gets from it? Finding Alpha using alternative sources is a lot harder.
A rape that obviously happened? Shove it in people’s face and they’ll admit it’s an outrage, just as they’ll admit factory farming is an outrage. But they’re not going to talk about it much. There are a zillion outrages every day, you’re going to need more than that to draw people out of their shells.
On the other hand, the controversy over dubious rape allegations is exactly that – a controversy. People start screaming at each other about how they’re misogynist or misandrist or whatever, and Facebook feeds get filled up with hundreds of comments in all capital letters about how my ingroup is being persecuted by your ingroup.
Craft is Culture from Alex Danco.
For me, reading this one of the things I think about is this article on Linus Torvalds. I mean really, getting work done, the craft (as Danco points out) is the key but at the cost of everything else that matters? Secondly how does this “craft” apply to so many different jobs. I think its definitely a lot harder to have “craft is culture” mentality for lets say an accountancy firm? Lawyers?
Linux proved that there is no upper limit to how much value you could extract out of a message board or email list, if you got the social dynamics right. The internet made it easy for craft practitioners to find one another, fraternize and argue over methods and best practices, almost like artists. The fact that none of these people had ever met in person, or had any shared culture or life experience, made zero difference. Their craft was their shared culture.
Apple Silicon – The Rest of Us
Apple and chips - good summary of why Apple can and everyone else might find it hard except MSFT but they don’t really want to care
John Collison – Growing the Internet Economy – [Invest Like the Best, EP.178] Interview with Patrick Collison of Stripe. Lots of great nuggets in this interview. You should read the transcript (or listen)
I remember the very first time I read that book, it didn’t really resonate. And the reason why is because, “Stripe’s a small company and we’re doing one thing. And so I don’t get this book, we’re just working on our business.” As the business grows, what happens is you have multiple different investment opportunities. And then it becomes very like investing where again, the name of the game is ‘Allocating scarce resources’ In the public markets, that’s capital. Internally, a company tends to be a little difference. Maybe it’s scarce engineering resources or scarce management bandwidth. Something like this, towards the most productive use. And I think when companies… The companies that are really successful are the ones that internalize this lesson and operationalize it. And so, Amazon, if you… I mean, they’re well cited here for a reason, but I think they are probably the tech company that are closest to being pure capital allocators in how they work, where they have a very strict and intellectually rigorous framework for funding new bets and allowing people to try out new things. And then the initiatives that are working, they really pour gas on. And so Alexa has thousands or maybe tens of thousands of people working on it these days. This is one of the things that works. The initiatives that don’t work, just get resources withdrawn from them, or eventually get shut down or something like that.
Thank you for reading, stay safe and be well!