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Book Summary: Lost and Founder

Radical Candor/Transparency

It is hard but it works – needs to be tampered with empathy

On being product focused

  • Consulting is limited by time and people – not scalable
  • Effective Product-focused business
    • reach
    • scalability
  • Start with a product informed by your consulting – real life problems others face

Impediment to shifting focus

  • Too comfortable
  • not enough time
  • difficulty finding the right customers for the product

On being a founder

  • Great founders enable a vision
  • forget about being hands on most of the time
  • job scope changes every six months – for any road block encountered focus on sufficing the requirements instead of perfecting it
  • you rarely get to do what you love to do
  • be cognizant on when to lead and when not to – have the specialist do the job
  • Cultivate self awareness in strength and weakness – structure company to work around them
  • Attribute of founder is instilled with near-permanence in the organization while those of supporting team fluctuates
  • the hardest parts of the business is less a reflection about the business than about the person experiencing them
  • Build expertise before building network, build network before building company
  • Focus on and reward the behavior, let the outcome take care of itself

On Values

  • Authentic values force hard decisions – held to be more important than money
  • have real costs: Impede certain behavior and strategy
  • Values are discovered instead of set
  • Used as a yard stick for recruiting new members to the cause. Helps get pass the competence versus cultural fit dilemma

On recruiting

  • CTO should be those that should be oriented towards education instead of shielding you from the nitty gritty details (black box)
  • Use your value system as a yard stick
  • Hiring for diversity will make the mental model of the organization more holistic
  • Great managers / coaches might not be great individual contributors

On markets and pivots

  • Pivots Are expensive don’t make it a habit – only resort to this tactic when the original hypothesis is not longer valid
  • focus on the market and then find a field ignored by others because it appears unsexy. From there craft a solution
  • Err on the side of execution

On investors

  • Need to take money for the right reason
  • Investors interest will tend to get out of alignment overtime (return multiples and investment horizons)
  • 80 percent of returns are by 20 percent of investments
  • They need at least a 10X to break even in a position for all the other losing positions they took
  • They don’t bring much value to the table
  • follow up with CEOs they invested in to understand how they react in a shit storm
  • Can help provide information on salary ranges

Choosing a market

  • If you can keep your ego in check you can chase after smaller markets and don’t need VC money
  • Great ideas are born of mediocre ideas that become better by
    • time spent iterating
    • humility learning
    • surviving
  • look for searches that indicate problems
    • Google Adwords
    • Moz’s keyword Explorer

Knowing your customers

Defining your user base

  • Call 3 different types of users
  • Find out why they subscribed and stayed
  • Craft messaging toward this group of people

Discounts are a doubled edged sword – while they might attract signups, these folks tend to have a higher churn rate

Schedule regular interactions with your user so that you can understand their habits. It helps you get to an empathetic position with them.

On Products

  • Feature set needs to be coherent enough to be able to deliver value
  • Early adopters
    • have very different expectation as compared to early majority –
    • hence more forgiving
    • ok accepting MVP
  • Retention triumphs acquisition any day

Marketing

  • Optimize for acquisition loops that reinforces the UVP instead of linear acquisition channels

Focused Execution

  • Practice the discipline of focus.
  • Important to Focus and not waver around unnecessarily. Its a waste of resources
  • A very focused and simplified product offering will help users to more easily understand and adopt it
  • Helps keep teams lean as a by-product
    • ROA improves dramatically
    • helps avoid future layoffs
  • Focus on what will not change in the next 10 years

Related references

  • Lean Startup, Eric Ries
  • Sprint, Jake Knapp
  • Venture Deals, Brad Feld
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Book Summary: Contagious

Contagious

On Word of mouth

  • versus advertising
    • it is more persuasive since the messenger has no monetary incentive and is a trusted person.
    • It is directed at the immediate context of the recipient
  • Only 7% of word of mouth happens online. Most still happens offline
  • Types of word of mouth
    • immediate word of mouth
    • ongoing word of mouth
  • Big forest fires aren’t caused by big sparks. Lots of individual trees have to catch fire and carry the flame

Word of mouth principles

  • Social currency
    • people want to feel special about themselves. When they get to share something extraordinary, they get the chance to Wow others.
    • Categories of currency
      • scarcity
      • exclusivity
  • Triggers
    • Ideas strongly associated with items frequently found the environment gets triggered more often. Pick common objects in a user’s environment that is not already laced with other meanings.
    • The more specific a trigger the higher the likelihood of triggered action.
    • Choose trigger right close to the proximity of the intended action
  • Emotions
    • Emotions that excites will be more likely to drive the recipient towards an action than those that.
      • Useful emotions: Awe, excitement, anger, fear
      • Not useful emotions: sadness, hopelessness
    • Associate the idea with emotions
  • Public
    • Monkey see, monkey do. Figure out how to make users activities more visible to those around them so that they could copy his action. A private action is unlikely to get copied
    • Choose stimulus that others can’t help but notice.
  • Practical Value
    • Useful things tends to get shared more frequently. While there might be less initial word of mouth, there will always be on going word of mouth.
  • Stories
    • help transfer huge amounts of contextual information to recipient
    • helps suspending judgement – using proof by analogy
    • story must be designed such that storyline falls apart when intended idea is removed from it
    • For dramatic purposes, interesting and novel points often get exaggerated as story pasts from one person. As such the story gets more and more remarkable as it is past along.

Related theories

  • Prospect theory: the WoW factor of an idea is often taken in association with the denominator its associated with
  • Rule of 100
    • for items below $100 present discount in percentage
    • for items above $100 present discount in absolute dollar figures
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Reflections on organizational observations

On the benefits of being under resourced

An organization that is under-resourced is similar to an individual who regularly practices intermittent fasting.

In the case of the individual, weaker cells are cannibalized by the body to produce new cells. Studies has shown decreased probability of developing cancer and Alzheimer, coupled in some cases with increased longevity.

In the case of the organization, operations are forced to be focused and only opportunities backed by stronger market signals prioritized and pursued. Wastage and distractions are structurally curtailed. ROI improves as a by product.

On organic growth

An organization that is organically grown tends to be happen-chance and exhibit somewhat illegible and opaque structure.

In contrast, an organization that is deliberately designed tends to exhibit a legible and transparent structure.

Counter intuitively, it is the former that exhibits more resilience in times of environmental stress. The observed illegibility and opaqueness is attributed to the process of organic adaption to its environment. Chief historical examples are:

  • Military of Carthage
  • Genghis Khan’s Mongolian horde

Related readings

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Key take aways from Trust me I am lying

Trust me I am lying

The publication eco-system

  • Every content creator within the publication ecosystem is under immense pressure to produce content under the tightest deadline.
    • renumeration is based on number of articles per period time
    • eye balls are converted to advertising revenue
    • lots of copying happens
  • Media was once about protecting a new, on the web it is about building one
    • well defined scope matters
    • content that dives deep into its vertical matters
  • Headlines are the most important
  • Tools of the trade
    • lavish pictures
    • impostors, frauds and fake interviews
    • support for the underdog causes
    • anonymous sources
    • prominent coverage of high society and events
    • different age but same old tricks
  • On monetization
    • Advertising is the main driver of revenue
    • Subscription model focus on trusted source as opposed to advertising source
    • RSS got killed because it went against the interest of Advertisers
  • On the online medium
    • The demands of the medium forces the bloggers to act they way they are
    • Tim Berners Lee stacked new content on the top and the rest of the internet thus follows
    • Thus the need to constantly create new content

On Virality

  • The most powerful predictor of virality is how much anger an article evokes.
  • The most powerful predictor of what spreads online is anger
    • sensationalism
    • extremism
    • sex
    • scandal
    • hatred
  • Things must be negative but not too negative so as to incite action
  • Media needs to get you feeling negative so that you are more likely to share
  • Empty vessels are incline to snark so as to feel unjustifiably good about themselves

On reality

  • Chris Hedges
    • is complicated and boring
    • the masses are incapable and unwilling to handle its confusion
    • In an age of images, entertainment and instant emotional gratification, no one seeks honesty and gratification
  • Cognitive biases
    • we are bad at being sketical
      • availability biases
      • narrative fallacy
    • we are worst at correcting our wrong beliefs
      • social proofing
      • consistency biases
  • First decide what you are intending to do with the information you collected

Related readings

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Key take aways from the Blockchain revolution

The Blockchain revolution
  • ensuring the integrity of data exchanged among these billions of devices without the need for a trusted third party
  • allow people that do not have access to the service of these third part into the digital economy
  • easier ability to get compensated for your work or ownership of digital property
  • Ronald Coase on types of costs
    • Searching cost
    • Coordination cost
    • Contracting cost
  • Dimensions of search
    • horizontal search – wide search across the web
    • vertical search – within a specific website
    • sequence – blockchain?
  • Innovation typically comes from the edge
    • monopolies have a lot of resources but lack the culture and will to explore, Yochai Benkler
    • This can be attributed to high levels of bureaucracy within the core

Related references

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Key take aways from the guide to a good life

A guide to the good life

Overview

The core of Stoicism as a philosophy is to live a good life (where peace of mind is deemed the highest good) by learning how to manage negative thoughts like:

  • anger
  • anxiety
  • fear
  • grief
  • envy

Techniques

This is done through the employment of these two techniques

Negative visualization techniques

  • Managing against hedonic adaptation by learning to desire what we already have. To do so, we must constantly remind ourselves the transient nature of things.

Focus of attention on what is within our loci of control

  • Totally within our control – focus our attention of these things
  • Partially within our control – internalize goals around parts where we have control
  • Totally out of our control – learn to be at peace with whatever outcome

Deliberate self denial

By deliberately depriving self the luxuries, one builds courage and self-control

Manage needs and desires

  • natural and necessary
    • Food and shelter
    • to fulfill
  • natural and unnecessary
    • Fine wine and luxurious food
    • to fulfill if not too much hassle
  • unnatural and unnecessary
    • fame and social status
    • to shun
  • unnatural and necessary
    • nothing exist in this category

Attitude towards time

  • The past and the immediate present is beyond change – be grateful for all that has came to pass and accept it with equanimity
  • The immediate future is where our loci of control falls – this is where we should channel our attention

Eras of stoiscism

  • Greek Stoics
  • Roman Stoics

The roman empire eventually adopted Christian religion as a the philosophical framework for state craft. This eventually displaced stoicism and other greek schools of philosophy.

Prominent stoic practitioners

  • Socrates
  • Marcus Aurelius
  • Xeno
  • Seneca

Related schools of philosophy

  • The Cynics – see Diogenes
  • Enlightened hedonism – see Epicurus

Related references

  • Meditations, Marcus Aurelius
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Key observations of Chinese One Belt Road Initiative in Africa

Territories observed

  • Egypt
  • Sudan
  • Ethiopia
  • Kenya
  • Tanzania
  • South Africa

Similarities observed

  • Heavy Chinese enterprise involvement in the building of roads and houses
  • Shops with Chinese labels observed in operation
  • In areas where there are construction operations, Chinese supervision and management observed aided by local manual labor
  • Ubiquity of mobile internet connection
  • Ubiquity of Samsung, Huawei and Tenco Android mobile phones ranging from USD50 among local adult and adolescent population

Macro trends

With the rise of the Chinese middle class, there is now increasing domestic demand for goods and services within China. This has driven the need to increase the overall throughput volume of such commodities. It can be speculated that the level of consumption is expected to surpass the level of production within China at some point.

Economic growth in China has for now hit a road block due to the following factors:

In light of these, China needs to start shifting its policy from an export focused economy to a domestic focused economy. To do so, it needs to feed and drive domestic demand for goods and services.

Regional trends

The Chinese government has been observed to enter into agreement with local African government to fund the build out of infrastructure, primarily roads and buildings. At the date of writing 85% of roads in Ethiopia has been completed within the country while in Zanzibar, Tanzania, all major roads are under construction and a sports stadium named Mao ZeDong stadium has been observed.

In exchange for the funding, local governments are restricted to engaging the service of Chinese companies. This safeguards the effectiveness of funds deployment for the operations aspects of the agreement while serving to three specific purposes. It minimizes the actual volume of liquidity that is tied up in loans to local government, while boosting demand for construction services within China and increasing maximum possible throughput volume of commodity exports from the region.

What is not obvious during the time of observation is how effective local governments are at managing funds during the stage between its receipt from China to its payment to the engaged Chinese companies. Discounting the inherent effectiveness of the various projects in driving local GDP, differing levels of corruption and maturity of national identify within the region will result in variance between actual ROI versus expected ROI for these projects.

On deciphering Chinese end goal within the region

At the moment of writing, it is yet clear how Chinese African relationship will crystalize for the future. Two key observations need to be made before we can get a glimpse of it.

Key observation #1 would be how China would react when the loans come to maturity and the local government have yet made sufficient returns from the infrastructure investments to pay off the debt.

Key observation #2 would be how Chinese companies would handle the post construction phase of projects that require ongoing maintenance in terms of knowledge transfer.

Related readings

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Observations in Sudan

Orange purchased from road side vendor in the middle of the Sudan desert

Society

  • Sharia law is used as the foundational legal framework within the country.
  • Public venues for prayer are prevalent
  • Majority of males observed to engage in worship 5 times a day
  • Touting is non-existent except at tourist venues as well as bus stations. Prices are fixed.
  • Hospitality of locals is commendable. On multiple occasions they would pay for tea and food if they happen to engage in any form of conversation out of curiosity.
  • Minimal signs of homelessness observed. Streets in Khartoum appear empty past 8pm in the evening.
  • Despite general lack of infrastructure, a strong sense of community was observed amongst the population. Daily affairs were was observed to be conducted in an orderly and peaceful manner.

Technology level

  • Level of technology level in government agency observed is low.
  • Mobile phones are prevalent. Android owns majority of market share. Samsung and Huawei mobile phone users were observed to be prevalent.
  • Facebook and WatsApp are the dominant internet communications medium. YouTube is in prevalent use
  • Internet connectivity is low and generally unstable hovering around 300++kpbs in hotels.
  • The following US based technology solution is not accessible. Use of proxy is necessary.
    • AWS
    • Gmail
    • Stripe
    • Bugsnag

Perception of foreign relations

  • US and western nations perceived still to be harboring colonial masters mentality attempting to meddle in affairs of nation with aim of gaining unfair advantage.
  • The Chinese government is perceived as friendly and fair, genuinely interested in helping the country develop.

Nature and history

  • Water melon was observed to grow wild in the sub-Saharan dessert. Much agricultural potential could be expected if nile is successfully harvested for irrigation purposes.
  • Donkeys, camels and cows observed to roam wild in the sun-Saharan dessert.
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Reflections on traffic in cities

Pedestrians in Cairo observed to take for granted that cars will yield to them
Thousands of vendors observed to offer slightly varied products for sale

Observations

The following observations were made in the streets of Cairo, Egypt:

  • pedestrians wandering across the road packed full of cars
  • inter-weaving cars that seem to hold zero regard for traffic lanes
  • cars abide with the instructions of police offices
  • cars abide with traffic signals
  • car spacing within traffic can be as close as an inch
  • cars do not display observable dent on their body
  • drivers tot the horn as a signal of intent as opposed to an expression of annoyance or frustration
  • cars travel at a low average speed

Reflections on the observation

The relationship between pedestrians and drivers as a group in a city can potentially be used as a proxy into the society’s culture. The contrast is stark when compared with the relationship of similar groups observed amongst coastal cities in the US.

It can be speculated that a seemingly chaotic traffic pattern tends to occur in a highly relationship centric society (Egypt, India and Cambodia) while an orderly traffic pattern tends to occur in a highly rule based society (US, UK and Germany).

In the former, the car and the pedestrian are not seen as distinct classes in the group. One can analogously describe cars as pedestrians on the road that just so happen to have 4 fours and are walking at a faster rate than pedestrians on 2 legs. Every member is always scanning the environment to understand how he or she should behave and respond.

In the latter, all members assume a well defined set of assumptions and operate as such. Execution of tasks occurs at a relatively higher velocity.

Using the legibility versus illegibility framework proposed by Sebastian Marshals, it can be speculated that highly relationship centric societies tend towards organic systems which are illegible by nature hence the observed chaos that counter intuitively seems to work.

It can further be speculated this fundamental difference in world view is the root cause of why relationship centric societies consider the rule based societies as oppressive and rule based societies consider the latter as untrustworthy.

Relevant references

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Observed similarities between two semi-normadic settlements

The main similarities between residential setups are carpets and pillows with a lack of observed tables and chairs within living spaces. It should be noted that the Uighur seemed more settled than the Bedouin.

Goats are common lifestocks observed.

Uighur residence in Xinjiang, Western China, 2008

Uighur holding bay for goats, Xinjiang Western China 2008

Bedouin residence in Wadi Rum, Jordan, 2018

Bedouin residence where camels and dogs are allowed to roam freely in Wadi Rum Jordan 2018