My Startup/Tech Information Diet

Newsletters

• StrictlyVC [free]
• Techmeme [free]
• Benedict Evans [free]
• Stratechery [paid]

Slack groups

• Lenny Rachitsky [paid]
• Rand leadership [free]

My curated twitter lists

• VC/Startup Stream
• The Stratechery Universe

In Brief - How I bootstrapped my startup knowledge

I jumped into startups in 2014 after finally walking away from law. Here's how I built up my startup knowledge from scratch.

The grind

• 10+ hour days, 6-7 days a week for 3 years straight
• Every spare moment went to consuming information I could immediately apply at work
• Startup podcasts on the subway commute
• Reading business books at my desk before the workday started
• Diving deep into First Round Review and other high-quality, tactical sites
• Volunteering for absolutely everything at work that could expose me to new parts of the business
• Having effectively 0 social life

The key thing about what necessitated that grind: I had no idea what I was doing and had no network in the startup world.

I had to make up for my complete ignorance with brute force effort.

What didn't work

 In-person networking events were the worst use of my time. 

They attracted people like me (not useful!), the information was too surface-level, and the opportunity cost was massive.

Reddit's enshittification?

I don't agree with every word of the original post, Tiktok's enshittification by Cory Doctorow. 

This process, however, does seem inevitable when a company tries to serve both advertisers and end-users simultaneously. 

When push comes to shove it's more important to serve the advertisers who are paying money than the end-users.

See: Reddit blackout protest updates: all the news about the changes infuriating Redditors

I tend to think that platform revolts (i.e. Twitter, Reddit) are overblown in the short-term (what suitable replacement will those users migrate to?) though point to changes coming in the long-term.

Starting to Get Wise on Semiconductors

Early resources for learning

On Apple's Process

Helpful to keep in mind amidst the Apple Vision Pro hot takes 

Via Daring Fireball, Do Wall Street Journal Reporters Read The Wall Street Journal?

August 2020 Learning List

Photo by Bekky Bekks on Unsplash

Information from the past month I'd actually consume again

July 2020 Learning List

Photo by Joshua Chun on Unsplash

Info from the past month I'd actually consume again.

April 2020 Learning List

Photo by Michael Maasen on Unsplash

Info from the past month I'd actually consume again.

Early-stage VC - Foundational Resources

Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash

The following resources form the backbone of my understanding of, and thinking about, early-stage venture capital investing.

[updated here]

Note 7-16-23: I have no idea why I duplicated this post to the link in "here" and kept this post. No matter, I'm still leaving this one published too.

July 2019 Reading List

Thoughts

• How Do You Make Good Decisions Efficiently in a Flat Organization? - Roman Imankulov
• How we make decisions at Coinbase - Brian Armstrong

• Amelia Earhart on Marriage - Brain Pickings
• Poet and Philosopher David Whyte on Love and Resisting the Tyranny of Relationship Labels - Brain Pickings
• Kahlil Gibran on the Courage to Weather the Uncertainties of Love - Brain Pickings 

Venture Capital Learning

• Behind the Scenes at a VC Fund, Part 1: Deals, Deals, Deals - Leo Polovets (Coding VC)
• Behind the Scenes at a VC Fund, Part 2: Helping Founders and Time Allocation - Leo Polovets (Coding VC)
• Extracting More Value from Investors - Leo Polovets (Coding VC)
• Strategies For VCs To Increase Startup Success Odds - David Teten (Techcrunch)

Fiction

• The Parable of the Sower - Octavia Butler
• The Parable of Talents - Octavia Butler