issue # 18
issue # 18
micromanagement, builders vs. talkers, investing wisdom rabbit hole
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🪐 COOL THINGS CURATED IN OUR UNIVERSE
1. On micromanagement and brilliant personal sites
An excellent (and brilliantly simple) personal site from Nat Friedman, listing his operating principles. This one in particular struck a chord:
The cultural prohibition on micromanagement is harmful. Great individuals should be fully empowered to exercise their judgment. The goal is not to avoid mistakes; the goal is to achieve uncorrelated levels of excellence in some dimension.
Which made me think of these words by Jerry Seinfeld:
If you’re efficient, you’re doing it the wrong way. The right way is the hard way. The show was successful because I micromanaged it—every word, every line, every take, every edit, every casting. That’s my way of life.
Which reminds me of this line in Tony Fadell's book Build:
To do great things, to really learn, you can’t shout suggestions from the rooftop then move on while someone else does the work. You have to get your hands dirty. You have to care about every step, lovingly craft every detail.
2. On builders vs. talkers
Revisiting this essay by Sean Blanda on the The Creative World's Bullshit Industrial Complex - both spot on and depressingly accurate.
TL;DR: Be Group 1
3. Down the product design rabbit hole…
We're deep down the product design rabbit hole at startupy HQ and revisiting the best Don Norman highlights:
Good design is actually a lot harder to notice than poor design, in part because good designs fit our needs so well that the design is invisible
Modern technology can be complex, but complexity by itself is neither good nor bad: it is confusion that is bad. Forget the complaints against complexity; instead, complain about confusion.
Complexity can be tamed, but it requires considerable effort to do it well. Decreasing the number of buttons and displays is not the solution. The solution is to understand the total system, to design it in a way that allows all the pieces fit nicely together, so that initial learning as well as usage are both optimal. Years ago, Larry Tesler, then a vice president of Apple, argued that the total complexity of a system is a constant: as you make the person's interaction simpler, the hidden complexity behind the scenes increases. Make one part of the system simpler, said Tesler, and the rest of the system gets more complex. This principle is known today as "Tesler's law of the conservation of complexity." Tesler described it as a tradeoff: making things easier for the user means making it more difficult for the designer or engineer.
4. On happiness
This - and so many other gems - added to the happiness topic - by Patricia Mou, Stuart Evans, Tanuj, and many others. I love the startupy community!
✨ CURATOR SPOTLIGHT
public equities investor & obsessive reader, going down the investing wisdom 🐇 🕳️
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Why is investing an interesting topic?
Every event in the world affects some asset price somewhere. It is incredibly intellectually stimulating to envision how the world will change over an economic cycle and the effects these changes will have on asset prices. Do it enough times and it inevitably becomes a humbling and exhilarating experience that keeps you coming back for more.
Investing is easy to understand but difficult to practice. It exists on a level playing field where many professional managers make it into the AUM hall of fame, but few to the IRR hall of fame. Those with exceptional IRRs seem to display discipline and fanaticism of the same kind as the top athletes in the world. In financial markets, breadth of knowledge, rigorous analysis, and cool temperament are only table stakes. Understanding market psychology is just as important since outcomes depend on the collective actions of other participants.
Things worth reading and watching?
The Quantum Rules: How the Laws of Physics Explain Love, Success, and Everyday Life –Kunal K. Das. Though not an investing text in a strict sense, this mind-bending book exemplifies –much like the world of investing does- the transcendental interconnectedness that exists between different and seemingly unrelated complex systems.
Erin Bellisimo interviews Bruce Greenwald on the latest edition of his book, Value Investing: From Graham to Buffett and Beyond. Value investing does not equate to buying companies with low P/E ratios. Bruce Greenwald provides a concise and meaty explanation of the theoretical and functional points that define a value approach to investing in fast-growing companies.
The Joys of Compounding by Guatam Baid. One of the clearest and most complete accounts I’ve read on the principles behind successful investing and how these go beyond investing to business and life.
A podcast worth listening to?
The Multi-Faceted Future of Value Investing with Henry Ellenbogen and Anouk Dey
As the silos between private and public investing continue to fade, Henry and Anouk provide insightful narratives for thinking about common characteristics of great businesses, from their early formation through their development into capital compounders with the potential to attain astronomical market capitalizations.
Projects worth following?
Tegus – developing unique business insight for investing is resource and time intensive. Tegus has managed to compile an extensive and well-credentialed network of professionals to share their stories and knowledge about the companies and industries they’ve worked in.
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