Rajesh Jain

FT: “For now, most US tech groups treat AI like an exclusive resource, restricting access to their most powerful models behind paywalls…But Chinese tech groups are taking a very different approach. By open sourcing AI, they not only sidestep US sanctions but also decentralise development and tap into global talent to refine their models. Even restrictions on Nvidia’s high-end chips become less of an obstacle when the rest of the world can train and improve China’s models on alternative hardware. AI advances through iteration. Every new release builds upon the last, refining weaknesses, expanding capabilities and improving efficiency. By open sourcing AI models, Chinese tech groups create an ecosystem where global developers continuously improve their models — without shouldering all the development costs. The scale of this approach could fundamentally reshape AI’s economic structure. If open-source AI becomes just as powerful as proprietary US models, the ability to monetise AI as an exclusive product collapses. Why pay for closed models if a free, equally capable alternative exists?”

Shane Parrish: “The most powerful productivity tool ever invented is simply the word “no.”…The single most effective habit is the willingness to change your own mind…If you want to understand someone, figure out the narrative they tell themselves about themself. If you want to change your behavior, change your narrative. If you want to change someone else’s behavior, offer them a more compelling narrative they can tell themselves.”

Niranjan Rajadhyaksha: “The 1991 reforms did away with all sorts of controls on investment, trade and prices. However, even more than three decades later, there is an entire web of regulations that impose immense burdens on companies, especially the smaller ones. Not all these are under the Union government. Many of the most onerous regulations are within the ambit of various state governments. Current attempts at deregulation in India will thus have to target constraints on firms at all levels of government.”

VentureBeat: “Perhaps the most technically intriguing aspect of Zoom’s AI strategy is its focus on SLMs. Rather than following the industry trend of distilling smaller models from larger ones, Zoom built its 2-billion parameter model entirely from scratch. The technical advantage of this approach becomes apparent when customizing for specific domains. “When you customize, it takes more effort, it’s just hard to steer a bigger ship,” [Zoom CTO Xuedong] Huang explained. As it turns out, the ability to customize the small model is a critical component to the development of specific agentic AI workflows. Looking ahead, Zoom envisions its SLMs eventually running directly on user devices, enabling both better privacy and more personalized experiences. At the heart of Zoom’s updates is AI Companion 2.0, which transforms Zoom’s AI capabilities from meeting support to fully agentic functions. With 2.0, Zoom is evolving from assistant to agentic AI that is capable of reasoning, memory and task execution.”

Econlib: “Populism is one of the most important political phenomena of our time. Yet, it is still poorly understood. At its core, populism is built on the notion that the masses are engaged in a struggle against corrupt elites who have rigged the political and economic system to their advantage. Whether left-wing or right-wing, this is the essence of the populist narrative: an appeal to “the people” against “the elite” and the claim to restore power to ordinary citizens by breaking the grip of entrenched interests. But can populism effectively challenge crony capitalism—a system where the political and economic elite are entangled? Can it truly dismantle the grip of entrenched interests? In a recent working paper, we argue that populist movements are likely to fail to deliver on their promises. The reason is that populism does not resolve the dual epistemic and incentive challenges necessary for success.”

Walter Mosley: “There was a period of time where all the books in the world could fit on this shelf…And what people did is they read them over and over again, and they knew them so well, and they learned so much, and it changed them. Now, this shelf represents one second of publishing…And then another and another and another.”

WSJ: “All of life is a negotiation with ourselves, according to the psychiatrist and scientist David Hawkins. As individuals, we are forever dueling with our demons or giving in to them, channeling the better angels of our nature or repudiating them. That conflict can be summed up as “Power vs. Force”—also the title of Hawkins’s terrific study of consciousness [published in 1994]. “Force always moves against something, whereas power does not move against anything,” he writes. “Force has an insatiable appetite, it constantly consumes. Power, in contrast, energizes, gives forth, supplies, and supports.” Hawkins believes that everyone has inherent potential, but realizing it means inevitable collisions with a messy and unpredictable world. Power is an intrinsic energy aligned with truth and integrity; force is aggressive and rooted in ego-driven instincts. Cultivating your inner power, Hawkins suggests, can give your existence meaning—and also help you navigate life’s obstacles. Meanwhile, giving in to force is a far riskier—and often bad—bet.”

WSJ: “If you’re asked to picture a successful leader, what do you see? If you’re like most people, you imagine somebody who is decisive and in control. Somebody who seems to have little doubts about his or her actions. But that kind of thinking has it backward. In more than two decades of research into how leaders’ decision-making has an impact on organizational success, I’ve uncovered a surprising insight: The most effective leaders aren’t the ones who seem to have all the answers. The most-effective leaders are those who question themselves. They are, in other words, ambivalent. They feel and exhibit conflicting emotions—and are tolerant of them—and can hold two contradictory thoughts or feelings in their head.”

Kevin Roose: “I believe that over the past several years, A.I. systems have started surpassing humans in a number of domains — math, coding and medical diagnosis, just to name a few — and that they’re getting better every day. I believe that very soon — probably in 2026 or 2027, but possibly as soon as this year — one or more A.I. companies will claim they’ve created an artificial general intelligence, or A.G.I., which is usually defined as something like “a general-purpose A.I. system that can do almost all cognitive tasks a human can do.” I believe that when A.G.I. is announced, there will be debates over definitions and arguments about whether or not it counts as “real” A.G.I., but that these mostly won’t matter, because the broader point — that we are losing our monopoly on human-level intelligence, and transitioning to a world with very powerful A.I. systems in it — will be true.”

FT on the rise of AI Apps: “In the early days of the cloud, start-ups had a built-in advantage against incumbents, which had technology and business models tied to a different delivery method. But software’s AI era is really more an extension of the cloud than an entirely new computing platform, points out Byron Deeter, a veteran software investor at Bessemer Venture Partners. That reduces the disruptive potential. Another difference has been the red-hot growth; this has made the most successful newcomers look more like consumer apps than traditional enterprise software, says Deeter. It isn’t clear yet whether they will retain consumer-like characteristics as they mature, for instance leading to higher churn rates than are typically seen in the business software world. The financial profile also looks very different. The AI-app companies face a significant cost of goods, in the form of fees paid to LLM companies each time their services are used. Many are choosing to swallow those costs for now in the hope that LLM usage fees will continue to plunge.”

Vivek Wadhwa: “Students believe that an expensive degree will catapult them into corporate success. But in today’s world of accelerating technological change, an MBA is little more than an overpriced badge that adds little real value. The tens of lakhs of rupees students pour into tuition, living expenses, and lost income will never be recovered. And even those who manage to secure coveted spots at the prestigious Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) are struggling to justify their investment.”

The Daily Economy: “A deficit is an annual shortfall of revenue, compared to spending. The difference is financed by borrowing, or “selling” US Treasury bonds. The reason investors are willing to buy bonds is that they are “discounted”: a $1,000 bond is sold at a price of $909.09; it will be worth $1,000 in a year, implying a 10% interest value, or rate of return. Treasury bonds are “auctioned” to ensure that the government pays the lowest rate to finance the deficit. The opposite of a deficit is a surplus, where revenue exceeds spending. Over time, the sum of the accumulated deficits and surpluses is the debt, or the total amount owed to bondholders… Deficits Are Future Taxes (DAFT).”

Blake Morgan: “Bill [Canady] explains how the 80/20 principle (Pareto Principle) can be applied to business growth, profitability, and customer experience. By focusing on the most profitable customers and products, companies can streamline operations and maximize efficiency, rather than getting lost in low-impact activities.”

WSJ: “Idle chitchat may feel dreary, but it establishes the brain ‘synchrony’ that allows for more meaningful exchanges…Instead of resenting small talk, I now see it as a gateway to a more meaningful connection. After some soothing chitchat, I now feel more confident about taking risks and asking questions that I might have once worried were too far afield.”

Andrew Chen: “Imagine products that automatically adapt based on user behavior, rather than based on the actions of the vibe coder. For example, if the vibe coder has specified that the signup funnel should easy, then after seeing users struggle with it, the software can automatically vibe code itself to improve the flow by dropping steps or adding explanatory text. Right now we are in a paradigm where PMs specify behavior that software engineers specify in code. Imagine if PMs can specify outcomes, and the software is configured to automatically adapt to hit those outcomes.”

Shivani Tiwari: “The marketers who will thrive in the coming decade aren’t funnel optimizers. They’re community builders. They’re experience designers. They’re relationship cultivators.”

Bloomberg: “I realized that government is not structured around the idea of action, but preventing mistakes. And this is no bad thing. Government is not meant to function like a private-sector enterprise. It is far more complex than any business. For one thing, business leaders don’t have 535 legislators telling them what to do, whereas government often needs authorization from lawmakers, whose interests are not always aligned. The same legislators who like to talk about shrinking the size of government also boast about bringing home the bacon for their districts. Those who imagine citizens as shareholders misunderstand what we want from government: to deliver services, not maximize stock value. And if the principles of business are ill-suited for government, then the Silicon Valley ethos of moving fast and breaking things, which animates Musk and DOGE, is an especially bad fit for an entity that funds schools, food stamps, care for the elderly, medicine for the sick, air traffic control, and on and on. Move fast and break Twitter, that’s fine — you get a bunch of angry Tweeters. But do that in government and you risk lives. Government, in fact, is designed to mitigate risk — to prevent people from improperly being taken off Social Security, Medicaid or disability compensation for veterans. In government, the stakes for failure are a lot higher than for the private sector.”

Jessica Lessin: “At The Information, our formula is just very different. It’s going very, very deep into subject matters, into beat reporting. I think the most ambitious, world changing, impactful stories come from gathering string around companies and people and areas of expertise. And I worry, because I see a lot of other newsrooms with very talented reporters put those reporters on very broad and enterprise-like beats. How can we hold companies and leaders accountable without that kind of reporting day in and day out?”

Dalton Conley: “Do genes determine our destiny, as the hereditarians would say? Or do we enter the world as blank slates, formed only by what we encounter in our homes and beyond? What started as an intellectual debate quickly expanded to whatever anyone wanted it to mean, invoked in arguments about everything from free will to race to inequality to whether public policy can, or should, level the playing field. Today, however, a new realm of science is poised to upend the debate — not by declaring victory for one side or the other, nor even by calling a tie, but rather by revealing they were never in opposition in the first place. Through this new vantage, nature and nurture are not even entirely distinguishable, because genes and environment don’t operate in isolation; they influence each other and to a very real degree even create each other. The new field is called sociogenomics, a fusion of behavioral science and genetics.”

Economist: “If you had to define the indispensable power of a leader, which would you pick? Would it be probing intelligence? Boundless energy? Or perhaps just being lucky? One ability may not come to mind for many, but really should. For if there is a talent that every boss needs to master, it’s the ability to say the same thing over and over and over again without seeming bored. You don’t have to spend a lot of time with executives to hear repeated words and phrases. They might be drumming home the critical elements of their strategy to investors. They might be reciting talking-points with the media. They might be inculcating the company’s culture at town halls with employees, or telling the firm’s origin story for the thousandth time. What they are not doing is starting afresh every time.”

SaaStr: “There is one common factor, that founders know, but often lose track of in their pitch: every VC, at any stage, is looking for outliers. No matter the price or how early or late. Your pitch, your team, your metrics, your market position, your vision, your TAM, your everything, should honestly and transparently but aggressively and positively show how you can be an outlier. It is hard to make money as a VC, as odd as that may sound. You generally need several unicorns per fund, and 1 per year, to truly do well…Now, VCs have a benefit in that not every single investment has to be a unicorn. They do have the benefit of a portfolio approach, which founders don’t. But 1 or more from each “batch”, from each, fund, does need to be to do extremely well.  Far more than just 1 for a bigger fund.”

FT: “Why is poetry such a powerful way to access our deepest emotions? And how can it be useful for business leaders? I asked Deborah Alma, founder of the Poetry Pharmacy, and co-author of an unusual book published this week, The Poetry Business School. In it, Deborah and Mark Constantine, co-founder and chief executive of Lush, the global cosmetics group, have collaborated with Kate Downey-Evans, a business psychologist. Their aim is to show how poetry helps us towards decision-making, dealing with failure and uncertainty, and taking risks — as well as soothing us when times are hard.”