Mike's notes.
Like engineers, we sit around and think about ways to make the good easier and the bad harder. In December of last year this happened when I swapped a tray of cookies into the pantry and replaced it with dried fruit, fresh fruit, and nuts. Though the cookies were still an arm’s reach away, they … Continue reading Design a minibar with Tim Harford
I don’t remember resolutions as a kid other than be nice to my brother or study more. Ambiguous, token offerings. As an adult, I get it. Finances, health, and friendships all take on different meanings as time passes. It’s that wonder of the world called: compounding. Part-of-the-reason things compound is the system. As kids, our … Continue reading Design it
Supported by Greenhaven Road Capital, finding value off the beaten path. Kara Swisher joined Barry Ritholtz on the Masters in Business podcast. What a two-hour trip. We’ll touch on just a few things. Structure. In physical spaces there’s no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ but low-friction and high friction activities. An example is automotive infrastructure. Roads, intersections, … Continue reading Kara Swisher
Supported by Greenhaven Road Capital, finding value off the beaten path. Tyler Cowen stopped by EconTalk (for the 11th time!) to talk about his book, Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero. The conversation with Russ Roberts circles the book in a way only Tyler Cowen can. The definition of polymath should be … Continue reading Tyler Cowen
Supported by Greenhaven Road Capital, finding value off the beaten path. Brent Beshore and the Adventur.es crew have a page on their website dedicated to Amazon, comparing the company to a gorilla and the Borg. They step cautiously around businesses that might enter that Seattle based gravitational field and that might pass the event horizon … Continue reading Adventures with Amazon
Supported by Greenhaven Road Capital, finding value off the beaten path. Patty McCord wrote, Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility, a book about her time at Netflix. The book reminded me of my time as a graduate student and the ways higher education is not like Netflix. McCord notes that it’s not the … Continue reading Patty McCord
Supported by Greenhaven Road Capital, finding value off the beaten path. Jeff Jordan’s career includes stints at eBay, The Walt Disney Store, Reel.com, and Paypal and as a GP at a16z, his current role. Listen to this post: iTunes, Overcast, or Soundcloud Successful businesses, a friend told me, either sell the same things to new … Continue reading Jeff Jordan
Sponsored by Greenhaven Road Capital, finding value off the beaten path. Michael Munger has a new book out, Tomorrow 3.0 and he’s talking to people like Russ Robert and groups at Duke about the ideas on those pages. In his walk through the economic woods, Munger found a Chesterton Fence and wonders if it’s falling … Continue reading Michael Munger
Sponsored by Greenhaven Road Capital, finding value off the beaten path. This talk, published in June 2015, was part of Richard Thaler’s book tour promotion for Misbehaving. Hal Varian, Chief Economist at Google, calls it “A wonderful new book.” When asked about ‘Econs’ (a utility maximizing computational automaton – that doesn’t exist) and humans on the tour … Continue reading Thaler and Varian
Supported by Greenhaven Road Capital, finding value off the beaten path. Austen Allred joined David Perell to talk about Lambda School. Come to school for free and then pay us back a part of your salary for a set period of time. The repayment dollars and days are limited. Lambda School is a great idea, … Continue reading Austen Allred
The Waiter's Pad 