This Week I Learned #85
“Go to bed smarter than when you woke up”
2020-01-13
A reflection on Charlie Munger’s wisdom. A single decision maker who is highly competent can create an amazing business. But that is rare. Such is the case for Singapore or Berkshire. The low error way is to select a great business because it should last the storm when shitty management takes over. Though it limits the upside, it may be able to survive long enough for a great management to come along. Such is the way of ‘finding one foot hurdles to jump over’. Though it’s hard to find great management early, they will be required to create such a strong organization in the first place. This may be how the investing strategies in the public and private markets differ given size and stage of the businesses available. Not to mention the different market structure of Private vs. Public that provide different kinds of advantages. Where knowing a lot about 4 companies in the public markets could be equivalent to 50 in the early-private markets. https://fs.blog/2017/02/charlie-munger-wisdom/
2020-01-14
Learned about the NPR's Up First podcast. I’d been looking for a quick and easy way to guest news and this might be the near-term solution with it’s 15 minute news. Though I’ve found its over-focus on US politics in the recent week to be a downside as I’m looking for news on global events. But, will see after a few weeks. https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510318/up-first
2020-01-15
Tony Fadell’s podcast with Tim Ferriss. The ‘father of the iPod’ and builder of Google’s Nest and the iPhone. What I found fascinating was his inspiring life of living abroad and moving to Paris with his family and using the constant travel as the inspiration behind Nest. From living in so many different homes in so many places he saw the similarity of problems people in various places faced. He lives a life splitting time between SE Asia and Paris with a new found focus on tackling the plastics problem. Learned that although plastic is advertised as recyclable, many aren’t and those that are recycled twice can’t be anymore and are then tossed away like other garbage. Boxed water and other cardboard styles are also limited in places they can be recycled so many don’t get recycled either. An insightful interview into someone who is continuously reinventing himself through curiosity. https://tim.blog/2019/12/23/tony-fadell/
2020-01-16
Podcast with Yancy Strickler, Co-Founder of Kickstarter, on Reboot. This was the first time I heard Yancy and Kickstarter’s story and found myself aligning with Yancy’s philosophy on business. I didn't know he started the company bootstrapped but I guess that makes sense given the mission of what it is. Yancy believes that the definition of value will change and ran Kickstarter away from the sole focus of maximizing financial value. He choose to not sell the company, not go public and not cash out because he believes that building an organization is a method of exacting change instead of starting one to obtain cash and using that cash. I also found his ‘bento-framework’ of separating priorities between his ‘future me’, ‘future us’ and ‘present me’ to be interesting too. A method of balancing the present needs with that of the perceived future. https://www.reboot.io/episode/115-this-could-be-our-future-with-yancey-strickler/
2020-01-17
Through a UX consult on the OMDV site, I learned a few things about fonts. I learned the traditional fonts many large publishing houses like newspapers use is called Serif and the modern fonts are sans-Serif. The way I’m remembering it is as Serif = letters have tails and Sans-Serif = no tails. I also learned many online sites keep font colours as a shade of grey/dark-grey for easy reading. Black is seldom used because the contrast with the white background strains the user’s eyes.