BC BUSINESS
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I just read all of Jeff Bezos's 23 letters to Amazon shareholders. And here's a thread with just one key-takeaway from each of these letters.

So if you're an artist or an entrepreneur looking to get some insight into the mind of this genius, read this right now.

 1997: Focus relentlessly on your customers and long-term growth.
1998: Here are the 3 criteria Bezos wants managers to consider when hiring (to set the bar high):

1. Will you admire this person?

2. Will they raise the average level of effectiveness of the group?

3. Along what dimension might this person be a superstar?
1999: How to think long-term? Think: it's good enough today, but it will get so much better.
2000: "In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run, it is a weighing machine.” - Benjamin Graham

We aren’t 10% smarter when the share goes 10% up, nor 10% dumber when it goes down. We want to be weighed, & we're always working to build a heavier company.
2001: Find the real root cause or causes of a problem—and do real root fixes.

So then, when you fix it, you’re not just fixing it for one customer. You’re fixing it for every customer.
2002: What’s good for customers is good for shareholders.
2003: Long-term thinking is both a requirement and an outcome of true ownership.

Owners are different from tenants: many investors are effectively short-term tenants, turning their portfolios so quickly that they are really just renting the stocks that they temporarily “own.”
2004: Cash flows do the best job of explaining a company’s stock price over the long term.

Amazon has a cash generative operating cycle because it turns its inventory quickly, collecting payments from customers way before payments are due to suppliers.
2005: Two type of business decisions:

1. Made with data, where it's easy to tell right from wrong.

2. Based on judgement, risky.

If you want to play it safe, limit yourself to number 1, but remember it would also limit innovation and long-term value creation.
2006: A checklist before investing money in a new business:

✓ it generates expected ROI
✓ can grow to a scale
✓ the opportunity is currently underserved
✓ you've the capabilities that are needed to bring strong customer-facing differentiation to the marketplace
2007: As an inventor, are you a missionary or a mercenary?

The mercenaries try to flip their stock. The missionaries love their product/service, and their customers, and are trying to build a great service.

Pradoxically, it’s usually the missionaries who make more money.
2008: Seek instant gratification and you'll find a crowd there ahead of you.

On the other hand, long-term thinking
• levers existing abilities,
• supports the failure and iteration required for invention,
• and frees us to pioneer in unexplored spaces.
2009: Listen to customers, but don’t just listen to customers—also invent on their behalf.
2010: Invention is the fundamental tool to evolve and improve every aspect of the customer experience.

The latest and the grestest technologies aren't always sufficient to solve all problems, so it's important to advance research and invent new approaches.
2011: Even well-meaning gatekeepers slow innovation. Whereas, with self-service platforms, even the improbable ideas can get tried.

So the most radical & transformative of inventions are often those that empower others to unleash their creativity—to pursue their dreams.
2012: The customer-centric way, rather than a competition-focused way, is a defining element of Amazon's culture.

Rather than waiting for external pressures, the brand is internally-driven to improve services before it has to, and to invent, before it has to.
2013: Once a year, Amazon literally offers to pay its associates to quit.

While the headline says “Please Don’t Take This Offer.” It's meant to make them rethink their priorities. An employee staying somewhere they don’t want to be isn’t healthy for the employee or the company.
2014: When you find a dream business opportunity, don’t just swipe right, get married.

Check for these 4 attributes:

1. customers love it,
2. can grow to very large size,
3. has strong returns on capital,
4. is durable in time—with the potential to endure for decades.
2015: Big winners pay for so many experiments.

Outsized returns come from betting against conventional wisdom, which is usually right. Given a 10% chance of a 100X payoff, you should take that bet every time. But you’re still going to be wrong nine times out of ten.
2016: It's always Day 1.

Day 2 is stasis. Followed by irrelevance, and decline, and, eventually, death.

Here's how to fend off Day 2:

• customer obsession
• a skeptical view of (overusing) proxies
• adoption of powerful trends
• high-velocity decision making
2017: How to achieve high standards?

1. You have to be able to recognize what good looks like in a particular domain.

2. You must have realistic expectations for how hard it should be (how much work it will take) to achieve that result – the scope.
2018: The path to success isn't straight.

At times you know where you’re going & you can be efficient. But the outsized “nonlinear” discoveries are likely to require wandering (intuition, curiousity), and it’s worth being a little messy & tangential to find your way there.
2019: Reflecting on the COVID-19 crisis, Bezos leaves us with a quote from Theodor Seuss Geisel:

“When something bad happens you have three choices. You can either let it define you, let it destroy you, or you can let it strengthen you.”

In the end, it remains Day 1.

More from Sumit Grrg

Sumit Grrg
Sumit Grrg
@sumitgrrg
These 10 threads will teach you more than reading 100 books

Five billionaires share their top lessons on startups, life and entrepreneurship (1/10)


10 competitive advantages that will trump talent (2/10)


Some harsh truths you probably don’t want to hear (3/10)


10 significant lies you’re told about the world (4/10)
ALL , MOTIVATION , BOOKS
Sumit Grrg
Sumit Grrg
@sumitgrrg
I've read all of Jeff Bezos's 23 years of Amazon shareholder letters twice now.

It's an MBA of its own.

Here's what I learned about startups, entrepreneurship, investing and more:

Your customers are loyal to you right up until the second that someone else offers them a better service.

Listen to customers, but don't just listen
to customers also invent on their behalf.

Here's Jeff Bezos on coming up with the Amazon Kindle:

We set ourselves the incredibly audacious goal of improving upon the physical book.

So don't be afraid to set big goals.

And remember that if you don't execute well, it will be done by someone else.

Many of the problems you'll face will have no textbook solutions, and so you should happily invent new approaches.
STARTUP , COMPANY STUFF , AMAZON
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Sumit Garg
Sumit Garg
@sumitupgarg
How to think critically:

(mental models and logical fallacies)

Whenever possible, confirm the "facts."

"Fact-checkers are just fake authorities anointed by the media, according to fact-checkers." — @naval

Authorities can make mistakes.

Don't fall for the "arguments from authority fallacy."

"In science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts." — Carl Sagan

Survival of the fittest argument.

Always think of multiple explanations for an argument.

Then think of tests to disprove each explanation.

Whatever remains has a better chance of being right than simply sticking with the first idea.

Two mental models that fit here:

Occam's Razor: When faced with multiple explanations pick the simpler.

Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." In other words, there can be honest mistakes.
PERSONAL GROWTH , ALL
sumitgarg.eth
sumitgarg.eth
@sumitupgarg
I read two-and-a-half decades worth of Jeff Bezos’s Amazon shareholder letters.

It’s like a mini MBA.

Here I’ve pulled out a free guide for startups, investing, marketing, and “web3”🧵

(It’s a thread, not an ebook)


First, why the focus on web3?

It’s the mid 90’s. A 30-year-old Jeff Bezos is trying to raise money for Amazon. And investors are wondering,

“What’s this internet thing?”

Fast forward, the year is 2022, and folks today are wondering,

“What’s web3?”

Now, a little background…

In 1994, Bezos quit a well paying job to start Amazon.

It wasn’t an easy decision. But Bezos used his famous “regret minimization framework.”

In other words, he didn’t want to be 80 and regret not doing what he really wanted to do.

But what did he want?

Bezos didn’t set out to disrupt retail from the outset.

He simply wanted to come up with a business idea based on the internet and then let the internet grow around it while he kept working on it.

Today, that idea is worth $1.7 trillion and counting.

Moving on to the lessons…

Each year since 1997, Bezos has written an annual letter to Amazon shareholders.

These letters reveal a great deal of lessons and secrets behind his massive success.

So what are they?
STARTUP , TECH
Sumit Grrg
Sumit Grrg
@sumitgrrg
Five valuable mental models

1. Gates' Law
2. Parkinson’s Law
3. The Paradox of Choice
4. Hanlon's Razor
5. Leverage

On startups, business, finance, investing, career, life and whatnot.

Here's a quick guide/refresher:

Law.

We overestimate what we can do in a year and underestimate what we can do in ten years.

It's the classic instant gratification versus long term mindset.

A ten year timeline will set you free.

Parkinson’s Law.

Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.

"How can you achieve your 10 year plan in the next 6 months?" — Peter Thiel

Forgive me for putting it right after Gates' Law. But why not?

The Paradox of Choice.

More choices make decisions hard.

Your friends can't decide what to eat? Don't pass the parcel. Ask them to pick between two options. Same for Netflix. And so on. Saves time!

Eliminate indecision by reduction.

Hanlon's Razor.

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

Not everyone's out there to get you.

There can be honest mistakes.
ALL

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Sources : This author has been continuously maintaining that the Brahminical hegemonic forces are surrounding Tamil Nadu from all sides and they are seeking revenge for Periyar’s social justice.

One Sridhar Vembhu, @svembu is the CEO of Zoho Corporation. He is 1/n

High Net Worth individual. He is the founder and CEO of Zoho Corporation. According to Forbes, he is the 59th richest Indian in the world with a net worth of US$2.5 billion as of 2020

Vembu runs the in-house Zoho University, which provides training to students who have 2/n

completed 12th grade and have certain math and tech skills.
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Recently, he announced the release of a new Messaging App called “Arattai” and said this is an alternate to WhatsApp.

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Cem Karsan \U0001f950
Cem Karsan 🥐
@jam_croissant
1/x The window we have been targeting for 2 months has officially opened... i Can not imagine a more textbook display of the power of Vanna at expiration as we saw on Friday. The capital building was overrun by an insurrection, but all that that meant was a bigger late day rally.


2/x that ended at ATH on the close. Between Gary the 🦍 & his RVol suppression & his hand off to late day Ivol compression & the Vanna index bid, the 🐻’s never had a chance... but Gary’s getting tired after 2 months battling complacency & Vanna’s 2 week vacation, 1 of her only

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So while America was forced into a high percentage of unemployment, billionaires in America made 406 billion from their “essential” businesses.

I wonder how much came from the

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Ky Nguyen
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@keywinhomes
@ReformedTrader That is a long post, but well written. Real estate is a claim on the future prosperity or ruin of a geographical location. Real estate intrinsic values is its ability to generate cash or similar costs to rent in that area. Intrinsic value is above zero in most cases.

Ironically enough, the location that benefits most from property ownership are places where rising living costs expand faster than rising middle income wages. Deflationary areas are hostile to property ownership as price is falling make collateral and borrowing difficult.

Homes are bought using leverage with agencies loan subsidies by the governments. As long as you have fixed rates, the costs of living expenses for your housing is set for 30 or 15 years which allow family to budget. Wealth can be accumulate over time as asset and income risen.

Time passed, real estate become detach from intrinsic values. Monthly mortgage rocket pass incomes and growth in the area. Quick money into real estate turn into a landmine. The 2007 fiasco could have been better or worst, but the free market is effectively dead as an ideology.

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A Happy Dude
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1/

Thread:

#DishaRavi, one of the founders of "Fridays for future India" has been arrested promptly by Delhi Police.
Let's look at why this was the best move to make.

Also let's see who she is and what her connection is to Greta.

2/

At first glance, you can find that Fridays for Future is an organization founded by Greta Thunberg with branches who conduct school strikes all across the world. Like so.
India, as you can see, is No. 3. And this is the map within India. South seems to dominate. AND


3/

They have global "protests" in almost all countries.
Coming to Disha Ravi, she's an "activist" from "Fridays for Future India" and was featured in Vogue when she joined, providing an educated guess that she may be leading the movement in India. Now...


4/

Let's see what this "climate activist" has done. This is a snippet from Fridays for Future India. As we can see, they have planted weeds all across India. The second SS is a snippet of their "actions" as found on their int'l website. India seems to be one of the highest.


5/

Doesn't end here. This is a snippet from Fridays for future India's instagram page. Take a look at the dates. No need to explain this.
Arresting this woman was the BEST thing that our Police have done till now. They seem to instigate people against GoI, running an agenda.
BUSINESS

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ArmaniTalks \U0001f399\U0001f525
ArmaniTalks 🎙🔥...
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A relationship begins to get stiff when excessive patterns begin to form.

Too many patterns leads to a boring, predictable, logical lifestyle.

Get the emotions involved.

Do something spontaneous out of the blue moon & flip the script.

'What's wrong with the patterns?'

Nothing is wrong with patterns.

However, there is a problem when all you have are patterns.

It's boring.

'Can you explain why?'

Sure 👇

The thing with relationships is that it's meant to be an emotional experience.

It's very difficult to logically explain love, right?

'Right.'

Well this is where you want to steer the ship the right way.

1. Too emotional is bad.

2. Too logical is bad.

Let me break it down.

1. Too emotional

If a relationship is completely ruled by emotions, then it's too volatile.

You will never reach productivity if you are aimlessly only following each others emotions.

This lifestyle tarnishes any structure for the couple.

'So why do people do it?'

Because it's fun.

You may ruled by this stage in the honeymoon phase.

Normal.

You'll be so spontaneous that it almost becomes a lifestyle.

But it's hard to level up your life when you're too spontaneous.

Avoid.
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॥ॐ॥
अस्य श्री गायत्री ध्यान श्लोक:
(gAyatri dhyAna shlOka)
• This shloka to meditate personified form of वेदमाता गायत्री was given by Bhagwaan Brahma to Sage yAgnavalkya (याज्ञवल्क्य).

• 14th shloka of गायत्री कवचम् which is taken from वशिष्ठ संहिता, goes as follows..


• मुक्ता-विद्रुम-हेम-नील धवलच्छायैर्मुखस्त्रीक्षणै:।
muktA vidruma hEma nIla dhavalachhAyaiH mukhaistrlkShaNaiH.

• युक्तामिन्दुकला-निबद्धमुकुटां तत्वार्थवर्णात्मिकाम्॥
yuktAmindukalA nibaddha makutAm tatvArtha varNAtmikam.

• गायत्रीं वरदाभयाङ्कुश कशां शुभ्रं कपालं गदाम्।
gAyatrIm vardAbhayANkusha kashAm shubhram kapAlam gadAm.

• शंखं चक्रमथारविन्दयुगलं हस्तैर्वहन्ती भजै॥
shankham chakramathArvinda yugalam hastairvahantIm bhajE.

This shloka describes the form of वेदमाता गायत्री.

• It says, "She has five faces which shine with the colours of a Pearl 'मुक्ता', Coral 'विद्रुम', Gold 'हेम्', Sapphire 'नील्', & a Diamond 'धवलम्'.

• These five faces are symbolic of the five primordial elements called पञ्चमहाभूत:' which makes up the entire existence.

• These are the elements of SPACE, FIRE, WIND, EARTH & WATER.

• All these five faces shine with three eyes 'त्रिक्षणै:'.
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🎉🎉 PHP 7.3 is here!

Here are the things I'm excited about.

🚂 Trailing commas in function/method calls!

This will certainly be a required styling choice for me. Same delightful benefits of trailing comma in multi-line PHP arrays, and JavaScript objects.


🧵 Less disgusting heredoc syntax!

Inlining heredoc strings in any way right now is grrrosssss. Now we get sensible capabilities. Everything that was wrong with it is now fixed!

(Ignore the bad syntax highlighting)


☠️ Finally, not-so-silent json_decode error detection!

This really sucked before, now it just sucks a bit less (who wants to pass a 4th param and pass 2 default params first? (helper function anybody?)


📜 Not horrible functions for getting the first and last item (or key) from an array!

Before you either strung a bunch of functions together or messed with internal array pointers. This is a much-needed improvement.
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A thread on HN about bad code in legacy projects both makes me think how little we've learned as a discipline over the years and, honestly, how little credit we give ourselves for some pretty major

Fun going down this list and thinking: "Hmm, plausible at a well-run modern software shop", "Hmm, possible, but requires implausible tradeoffs", "Literally disallowed by languages", and "If you were to attempt doing that our test suite wouldn't let you merge."

I think we as an industry celebrate (not quite the right word) failure too much and don't celebrate success nearly enough. There is no DailyWTF for competent execution, word of which generally stays pretty local to the source while incompetence passes into legend.

Alrighty let me try to thread the needle on being the change I want to see in the world while not giving away anything that will get me in trouble:

Ruby has wonderful developer ergonomics. Typed languages are easier for machines to guarantee the correctness of. We built a type checker for Ruby (and I believe it is slated for OSS release sometime).

c.f.
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katya adler
katya adler
@BBCkatyaadler
Again, at such a key moment in UK and at such high political levels, evidence of deep misunderstanding of EU: The PM is under pressure in some quarters to delay #Brexit vote to allow her first to “improve” deal in Brussels BUT EU is determined not to budge at this stage

2) All EU leaders watching tomorrow’s vote. Of course they want to avoid a no deal #Brexit BUT they feel the deal - so painfully negotiated between EU and UK - is too fresh to re-open. Clarifications, yes but fundamental renegotiations, no.

3) The EU’s international reputation as a tough deal-maker is at stake here too. If Brussels now suddenly “gives in” to U.K. on EU red lines (eg backstop) then that would weaken the EU’s reputation in future trade negotiations with other non EU countries

4) Also on backstop the EU is unlikely to cave in to favour a relationship with a leaving member state (UK) against the explicit wishes and ignoring the deep concerns of a continuing member: Ireland.

5) Both the EU and the PM signed up to a guarantee to protect the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. If either the U.K. or EU can leave the backstop unilaterally then this clearly is no longer a guarantee.
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