This Week I Learned #87
“Go to bed smarter than when you woke up”
2020-01-27
Learned that the creator the math/block game: 2048 was made by an Italian 19 year old over a weekend to see if he could make a game from scratch. It received 4M+ visitors in the first weekend. Always pursue those weekend projects ;). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2048_(video_game)
2020-01-28
A bottom-up approach to strength training program design called Emerging Strategies from the RTS team.
The idea is to start with 1 week of training instead of planning out for the next 12 weeks (classic block periodization). The 1st week is to be based off of past data to set up the assumed intensities to see what worked before. Classic periodization science dictates a requirement for a development, peaking and tapering block as one progresses in strength development and into the meet. This strategy looks at identifying how long it takes an athlete to “peak” in strength development and using that knowledge to plan training so that if the athlete typically peaks in 5 weeks, having the 5th week be the week of competition. This is different from classic periodization where you force adaptation into 10-12 week parameters. This strategy looks at observing how your body peaks and what intensities of training are most effective. It runs on the assumption that one’s body will develop in a similar time period consistently. Empirical data says so but this will also be different per athlete. It also requires hyper-vigilance in every day training to assess stress/development. If stock investing can follow a bottom-up approach and if I believe org. Design should also follow a bottom up approach… then why not my training?
2020-01-29
Learned about the famed con man Frank Abagnale Jr’s career from the movie Catch Me If You Can, which the movie is inspired from. Spoiler alert for the movie. FYI. After being caught by the FBI for being a con man, check forger (about $2.5M in 1960s) and imposter (he impersonated a pilot, physician, lawyer among 8 other professions) you’d think he would be in prison for a long time and that would be the end of it. However, after having an illustrious criminal career from ages 15 to 21 and committing fraud in 12+ countries, Frank ended up working with the FBI’s financial fraud team to help them catch others like him. He changed the security of modern banking checks (where F500 companies now pay him millions for), teaches at the FBI academy and runs a financial fraud consulting company. One could wager that hiring ex-criminals to combat fraud might actually be an effective hiring strategy.. but it’s just fascinating to see how people can redesign their career in fascinating ways. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Abagnale
2020-01-30
Learning from Daniel Ek, Founder of Spotify, on the Invest Like The Best podcast.
He started out training to be an opera singer from his grandfather and he felt this experience taught him the similarities of music and math and prepared him for the tough journey of entrepreneurship.
His view of business models: Hard to change customer behaviour from free to pay. The value of pay needs to be so much greater than free. That’s why Spotify has a free option. The value for the paid service wasn’t thought to be ‘ad-free’ but the ability to have all the world’s music in your hard drive. This would be a more difficult task when one would have to constantly pirate music. The convenience and access. This may also be why Luminary, the Netflix of podcast, is failing. Because people aren't used to it ever not being free and the paid version isn’t that much better.
Another view is on how companies should start with redistributing existing content before making their own. Companies like Netflix and HBO started out sharing existing material like dvd rentals and the ability to watch movies at home. They eventually created their own content, maybe as a necessity because licensing got expensive. But most marketplaces of content don't succeed by setting out to make their own. Many redistribute existing contents in a more convenient way.
How he focsued on the Swedish market, then the UK market and how the US market came in 3 years afterwards. It's not about hitting the big market first. The Swedish gov't needed them with 70% of the music in the country being pirated. Scaling and making it work for the world came up as a problem to solve after they could help 1 small country. http://investorfieldguide.com/ek/
2020-01-31
Learnings from conversations from friends currently attending M7/Ivy-League MBAs in the US. Supporting further empirical evidence is the world filled with all kinds of Type-As where you the 100 people you meet are the 100 management consultants you’d met at the firm.. just everyone is from different firms at the MBA program. With 60% of MBA grads exiting to consulting/I-banking jobs, it seems the environment does an excellent job creating such an outcome as friends told me about the lavish and over-the-top information parties all the consulting firms would host to impress the MBA students. Consulting firms would fly in partners and employees from the globe to tout how they are changing the world and the glamour of being a consultant. Apparently, this deters many from choosing jobs in large tech firms as they don’t use similar showboating tactics. There is also the herd mentality where if you do not take part in the consulting/investment-banking recruiting process like 80% of your classmates…then you are somewhat of an outcast and go through a kind of emotionally straining process of trying to explain to people that he $200K compensation+brand name prestige isn’t what it appears to actually be. The picture presented in our conversations was a school process where grades do not matter yet all the Type-As do not know where to put their energy so they resort to studying non-stop to get 95% averages or doing club activities to pad their resumes for once again another cut throat recruiting cycle with a few actually trying to do something unique/interesting/different.