Eric Ashman: “One of the most complex leadership challenges a founder will grapple with is implementing significant shifts in team or strategy when it’s clear your original assumptions aren’t delivering the expected results. There are two traps to avoid when trying to change the course of your startup. First, don’t change too many things at the same time in a frantic effort to accelerate the impact…Second, avoid the trap of impatience and the resulting constant course correction when you believe the change you seek isn’t coming fast enough.”
Charlie Munger: “America should ban crypto…It isn’t currency. It’s a gambling contract with a nearly 100% edge for the house.”
Marc Andreessen: “Starting a company is a real commitment, it really changes your life. My favorite all time quote on being a startup founder is from Sean Parker, who says —“Starting a company is like chewing glass. Eventually, you start to like the taste of your own blood.” I always get this queasy look on the face of people I’m talking to when I roll that quote out. But it is really intense. Whenever anybody asks me if they should start a company, the answer is always no. Because it’s such a gigantic, emotional, irrational thing to do. The implications of that decision are so profound in terms of how you live your life…When you’re a startup founder, it’s all on you. Everything that happens is on you, everything that goes wrong is on you. When there’s an issue in the company, a crisis in the company, it’s on you to fix it. You’re up at four in the morning all the time worrying about things.”
David Brooks: “If, say, you’re a college student preparing for life in an A.I. world, you need to ask yourself: Which classes will give me the skills that machines will not replicate, making me more distinctly human? You probably want to avoid any class that teaches you to think in an impersonal, linear, generalized kind of way — the kind of thinking A.I. will crush you at. On the other hand, you probably want to gravitate toward any class, in the sciences or the humanities, that will help you develop the following distinctly human skills: a distinct personal voice. presentation skills, a childlike talent for creativity, unusual worldviews, situational awareness.”
NYTimes: “There’s no need to wait for ChatGPT to find a better source of information than Google. For a large number of my most important internet searches these days — when I’m looking to learn something, fix something, buy something or decide something — there are two places I look most often, neither of them Google. One of these places is Reddit…The other is YouTube. The gargantuan video site is a lot of things to a lot of people — in different ways, YouTube is a little bit like TikTok, a little like Twitch and a little like Netflix — but I think we underappreciate how often YouTube is a better Google. That is, often it is the best place online to find reliable and substantive knowledge and information on a huge variety of subjects.”
Atanu Dey: “Reform of the government can only happen if the people change their understanding of the government. But the government controls the systems — education, the media, the intellectuals — that could affect that change in the minds of people. It’s not in the interests of the politicians, bureaucrats and judiciary to make those changes that will reduce their power and prestige. So the same song continues to play and the people continue to faithfully dance to it…Not just economics textbooks, the entire Indian educational curriculum has been designed by an incompetent government since at least one hundred years, and it is no surprise that the people continue to select kakistocratic governments (government by the most corrupt and the least competent.) The vicious circle is completed: education controlled by a kakistocratic government leads to uneducated, ill-informed people, who then select the next set of incompetent crooks (politicians, bureaucrats, intellectuals) to lead them.”
