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Below are a few that subsequently worked well for me. Note that I don’t need to satisfy all of them, but I do want to satisfy most of them: If it has a single founder, the founder must be technical. Two technical co-founders are ideal. I must be eager to use the product myself. This rules out many great companies, but I want a verified market I understand. Related to the previous point: consumer-facing product/service (e.g., Uber, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) or small-business focused product/service (e.g., Shopify), not big enterprise software. These are companies whose valuations I can directly impact through my platform, promotion to my audience, introductions to journalists, etc. More than 100K active users OR serial founder(s) with past exits OR more than 10K paying customers. Whenever possible, I want to pour gasoline on the fire, not start the fire. More than 10% month-on-month activity growth. Clean “cap table,” minimal previous financing (or none), no bridge rounds. U.S.–based companies or companies willing to create U.S.–based investable entities. Shopify started in Canada, for instance. Have the founders ever had crappy service jobs, like waiting tables or bussing at restaurants? If so, they tend to stay grounded for longer. Less entitlement and megalomania usually means better decisions and better drinking company, as this stuff normally takes quite a few years.
Tools of Titans
Timothy Ferriss
In AD 378, the Roman emperor Valence was defeated and killed by the Goths at the battle of Adrianople. In the same year, King Chak Tok Ich’aak of Tikal was defeated and killed by the army of Teotihuacan. (Tikal was an important Mayan city state, while Teotihuacan was then the largest city in America, with almost 250,000 inhabitants – of the same order of magnitude as its contemporary, Rome.) There was absolutely no connection between the defeat of Rome and the rise of Teotihuacan. Rome might just as well have been located on Mars, and Teotihuacan on Venus.
Sapiens
Yuval Noah Harari
INTERROGATOR: Let’s look at the current composition of the ETO. The Adventists would like to destroy the human race by means of an alien power; the Redemptionists worship the alien civilization as a god; the Survivors wish to betray other humans to buy their own survival. None of these is in line with your original ideal of using the alien civilization as a way to reform humanity. YE: I started the fire, but I couldn’t control how it burnt.
The Three-Body Problem
Cixin Liu and Ken Liu
...catch up on these, and many more highlights
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