What if you could avoid competition forever?

How to Build a Personal Monopoly with @david_perell + @jackbutcher

THREAD👇

There are over 30 million podcast episodes.

and you don't have time to listen to them.

So let me save you time with 7 that will make you smarter today🧵

My First Million with @ShaanVP + @theSamParr

Best Episode: #171 How to Generate Millions from Paid Events

Sam made $100k in 8 weeks hosting paid events with without any previous audience.

He gives a play by play to print money.

The @tferriss Show (the OG)

Best Episode: #341 with @nickkokonas

The most important concept in the damn world is asymmetric risk.

This episode was my first exposure to it.

Been a huge Kokonas fan ever since

20VC with @HarryStebbings

Best Episode: Jan. 4th, What happened in 2020? What can we expect looking forward to 2021?

He got Bill Gurley and Howard Marks... for the same episode.

Need I say anything else?

The @naval Podcast

Best Episode: First 25 episodes which are 2-5 minutes each

Ok, I'm cheating here

but when Naval breaks down the most popular twitter thread of all time: "How to Get Rich wIthout Getting Lucky"

...you stop and listen

Improve by comparing small.

“To improve, compare little things

• marketing strategies
• exercise technique
• writing tactics

To be miserable, compare big things

• career path
• marriage
• net worth

Comparison is a teacher only when applied narrowly.”

@JamesClear

Bill Gates got lucky.

With an IBM deal he signs in 1980.

Here's the hidden truth about the rise of Microsoft:

So we all know the Bill Gates story.

A brilliant kid who loves computers.

Drops out of Harvard in 1975 to start Microsoft with his childhood friend, Paul Allen.

Gates and Allen originally sell code interpreters to companies like MITS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry System).

In 1976, their revenue is $16,000.

By 1978, Microsoft hits $1 million in revenue.

But they were far from taking over the world.

Until...

In 1980, IBM asks Gates to build them an operating system for their new personal computers.

He had never done this.

So Gates directs them to his friend Gary Kildall from Digital Research.

The IBM-Digital Research meeting goes poorly.

The two parties argue over non-disclosure agreements and other legal issues.

Eventually, IBM offers Digital Research $250,000 to build the operating system.

They refuse.

"We will only do royalties."

I devoured 50 years of Warren Buffett shareholder letters.

The result?

12 timeless principles from the greatest investor in the world.

Here are the golden nuggets🧵

The Orangutan Effect

"If you sit down with an orangutan and carefully explain to it one of your cherished ideas, you may leave behind a puzzled primate, but will exit thinking more clearly yourself."

Teaching others actually teaches yourself.

2022

The Faulty Premise Framework

“A horse that can count to ten is a remarkable horse - not a remarkable mathematician.”

Beware your comparison set.

Are you judging crappy relative performance or absolute results?

1985

Pick the Right Business Boat

The business boat you get into is more important than how effectively you row.

“When a brilliant management team tackles a business with a reputation for poor fundamental economics, the reputation of the business usually stays intact.”

1985

A Rising Tide Doesn't Lift All Bonuses

"Good performance should be rewarded whether Berkshire stock rises or falls.
Average performance should earn no special rewards even if our stock soars."

Judge for individual performance or risk free riding on group success.

1986

I've interviewed 5 founders of billion dollar startups.

Here's what I learned:

CTFU

"Catch the F*ck Up"

Startups are about speed.

If you don’t have urgency, you lose.

Successful people don't find hard things easy to do.

Instead, they've trained themselves to be better at hard things.

Create habits so small that they are painless.

h/t @JamesClear

Be short and to the point with important people.

Co-founders aren't people you meet at networking sessions.

They're your friends.

Get your smartest, hardest working friends and convince them to start a company with you.

Dear postgraduate students

Everyone says selecting your supervisor(s) will make or break obtaining your degree with a sound mind. This is true. So here are a few of my own tips on just how to do that. I hope it helps.

(Thread)

1. Know what you need from the get-go. As people, and as students, we need different things to succeed. Ensure you know what this is for you and make your search and eventual selection of a supervisor based on that.

2. How do you know which academic does what? Either email a number of potential academics or organise a quick in-person/online meeting with them to discuss their respective research interests. You can either align yourself to these or ask if they’re willing to take you on but...

...supervise a topic outside of their own research interests. It’s not unheard of but just depends on them.

3. Ask them about their supervision style, what works for them and assess whether that sounds like it would work for you. You can love their research topics but if you feel like they won’t be a good enough supervisor, find someone else. Remember you’re going to be spending...

Unexpected #Etymology

Words you wouldn't guess are etymologically linked.

An ongoing, continually updated thread 👇🏻

Medicine and remedy both come from the Latin verb medeor, meaning to heal.

Medicine comes from the Old French medecine, from the Latin medicina meaning medicine.

Remedy comes from the Old French remede, from the Latin

Feminism, fawn and fetus both come from the PIE root *dʰeh₁(y)-, meaning to nurse or

Pine (tree) & Piñata (papier-mâché container) both come from the Latin pinus—meaning pine.

Piñata (Spanish), came from piña meaning pineapple, as the paper-covered box resembles one. Piña comes from the Latin pinea meaning pinecone (derived from

Whiskey and wash both come from the Proto-Indo-Euro root meaning "water; wet."

Whiskey (Irish uisce beatha & Scottish uisge-beatha) literally means "water of life."

Wash cames from the Middle English weschen, meaning "to

The Google Doc where the San Francisco school board did it's research for deciding which historical figures to cancel is public, and it's hilariously bad

The best part is the "Notes" tab, where someone lays out why the stated reasons are complete BS.

Case in point: "Lowell High School must be renamed because the namesake was a racist."

Notes: "Yeeeah, no, it wasn't named after that guy at all."

(they voted to rename anyway)

Another example: "Paul Revere led the Penobscot Expedition, which led to the colonization of the Penobscot."

Notes: "What? No. The Penobscot expedition was fought against the British, in Penobscot Bay. The natives weren't involved."

(voted to rename anyway)

"Dianne Feinstein was responsible for evicting an entire Filipino neighborhood!"

Notes: "That happened in 1977. She wasn't mayor until a year later."

(voted to rename anyway)

"Abraham Lincoln executed 38 Dakota Indians!"

Notes: "The Minnesota governor was going to execute *300*. Lincoln intervened when he had no obligation to, and saved the vast majority of them."

(voted to rename anyway)

1/

Supercharge your skills with effective learning⚡️

AVOID:
⛔️Wasting time with inefficient strategies ⏳
⛔️Spinning your wheels in tutorial hell ⚙️

A summary of the most effective learning strategies GUARANTEED to make you a better developer

🧵👇

2/

⚡️Deliberate practice

It's good to know the fundamentals well, but you will never improve by sticking to practicing only what you already know.

The alternative to this is deliberate practice...

3/

Deliberate practice means:
✅Practicing things you're weak at
✅Constantly pushing the boundaries of your knowledge and skills.

Before each learning session, ask yourself whether what you will learn adheres to the above.

If it doesn't, learn something that does instead

4/

⚡️Scoping the subject (credit to @AliAbdaal for this concept)

When new information can be 'docked' to an existing framework of knowledge, you can understand and retain the information better because you can relate it to what you already know and understand...

5/

Build a 'map' of the entire subject you're studying 🗺

Include all of the sub-headings that exist within that subject, make it a nested structure (I do this as a bullet point list in @NotionHQ)

You've then got a skeleton list to 'hang' your knowledge from as you go along 💀