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The bookcase

One of the books Shaun rated five out of five.

The Anthology of Balaji

Eric Jorgenson

  • 5/5
  • Finished 2024
  • Memoir
  • Philosophy
  • the point of doing a startup is to build something money can’t buy.
  • ultimate purpose of technology is to eliminate mortality, the main source of scarcity.
  • Speed has value because time has value. Time has value because life spans are finite.
  • Regulation is slow compared to real time regulation of Uber/airbnb.
    • pass a law - force someone to do something
    • write code - i will do something
  • every area tech touches reduces prices - it is the opposite for government. eg guns meant tech + supply chain were more important than physical skills
  • 1900’s was centralised power/media/communication → now unbuilding → and will rebundle around new core
  • physical (cash, theatre) → digital (e-transfers, movies) → native digital (crypto, CGI)
  • in future, drones could transport us anywhere, VR will allow us to visualise online communities of millions. imagine continuous sugar monitoring, or dopamine monitoring.
  • pursue truth > health > wealth - distinguish social consensus from truth.
  • If you are what you eat, then you think what you see/consume.
    • could wearable detect dopamine?
    • could a tool give me nutritional facts on the media i consume?
    • blocknyt.com
  • people normally say: war reporting, politics in one end of spectrum ←→ kardashians is the other end. actually :

    infotainment ← → news you can use+tutorials. People consume media to be entertained, so they don’t have the incentive to understand something deeply.

    overconsuming novely + underconsuming purpose - imagine a personal dashboard on metrics you want to improve like health/hobbies. Imagine MensHealth 2.0 that gave personalised info for you, and you could track the info.

  • Socialism < nationalism < capitalism < technologist
  • 6 P’s
    • Product - what are you selling?
    • Person - to whom?
    • Purpose - why are they buying it?
    • Pricing - at what price?
    • Priority - why now?
    • Prestige - why from you?
  • Ask reports to describe bull, base, bear case for 1 yr + longer (eg 4yr) period
  • When scaling, include a metric of quality to compensate for possible cheating of main growth metric
  • Execution - every person responsible for 1 thing
  • Hard work is a competitive advantage

    Even thinking hard work is a competitive advantage is itself now a competitive advantage.