I had quite a bit of fun learning new stuff this week. Got a muscle tear fright midweek but that took one thing off the checklist to feel guilty about - workouts! With more time available to attend to the long term goals I submitted my first product teardown in the Product Folks on Share Chat, something I’ve been procrastinating for last 2 months now. At work, finally found out the utility of writing unit tests, got my first IPO stock allocation, rekindled my interest in reading about food, films and founders.
💭 It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer - Einstein
Strategy and Competition on the Internet - Deepak talks about the evolution of strategy and what it meant from the 19th century through wars, industrial revolution, machine manufacturing to the Internet and network effects as a moat in today’s world.
Luca Review - My favorite writer Rahul Desai talks about friendship and adulthood. Are you a Luca or an Alberto? ;)
Found this coolest resource on cognitive biases -> For the longest time I wanted to do a deep dive into understanding these biases and how they affect the world around us. I often oscillate between “these things add no practical value to my life” to “it’s criminal how these are not taught at school” but YMMV so feel free to hang up this poster on your study wall
White Hat Jr - This was easily the best podcast I had listened to this year. Let alone the controversies surrounding the company and the decisions taken by the person in focus, I found his journey from his college days to sabbaticals to starting up and acquiring to be so insight rich that I had to come back home and read the transcripts for my notes again.
At it again - Leave it to the man himself to make you rethink the core of our existence. On Thursday night, I sat down for a good 45 min meditating on this tweet and that was the most peaceful I’ve felt this entire week.
Mutual Funds - When NAVI made news last week with their new fund, I was intrigued by the working of MFs and the actual returns, taxation and various factors at play. While this thread makes decent inroads into the concept, I quite enjoyed talking with my friend about the divisions within the different kinds of MFs - equity, debt, hybrid, active, passive and terminologies like exit load, expense ratio, US funds, funds of funds and their taxation implications. The talk around these financial products revolving around returns (without taxation and other charges involved) needs to change. HMU if you need this 101 before I blog on it.
Everything startup - The exhaustive list of startup from investors to tech stacks. This is Startup Stash India.
Ugh Fields - On Tuesday night I came across this hacker news article that hit too close to home - it was about not giving your best at work and doling out sub standard work to carve out time for other activities you enjoy doing (like this newsletter). That followed with a discussion about ADHD and this discovery of the Ugh Fields.
Food Discovery - This thread really just made me sit up and rediscover my lost passion for everything food and cooking. The truth bomb about for solving for food discovery being way different from restaurant discovery and true food discovery being a way bigger problem to solve that might have to tap into creativity, community and the whole subjectivity within the objective need really gave me some food for thought (pun intended :P)
Habits actually drive us more than we can fathom
While twitter grunts and fights over the hiring market situation, don’t you forget that the third wave is still very much a possibility with reports of revenge tourists ready to break free from their homes
Until next time…. with news of our Euro, Copa America, Wimbledon and NBA winners