Category: Reading

Reading

32 Books I Read in 2017, and the Book of the Year Goes to…

For me, 2017 marked another year of exponential personal and professional growth, both through running a fast-growing start-up and through keeping up the habit of voracious reading. I shall do a separate post to reflect on my lessons learned as a CEO, but this one is about books.

At the beginning of 2017, I set the intention of cutting down the number of books vs 2016 (28 books), with the goal to be more selective and to allow ample time for knowledge digestion. Despite the intention and a much busier schedule than 2016, and to my surprise, I finished the year at 32 books (one important caveat, with much help from audile books from Audible). First, I think reading has been ingrained in my brain as a habit, once I finish a book, my mind naturally hungers for the next great one. Second, I used reading/listening to fill up most of my fragmented idle time, such as in transportation or in the gym. As long as I have a good book in hand, I feel that I am productive and getting better mentally.

Similar to 2016, my reading list encompassed a wide range of topics in English and Chinese, but one category that dropped out completely is finance & investments books. I don’t think this is a one-year anomaly but a natural cognitive progression for me, where behavior economics/psychology and philosophy are more additive to my mental models at this time. Some books, such as those on consumer internet operations, design, and big data, were essential for my current industry and trade.

One category that popped on to my list and will remain there going forward is fiction & literature, and this gets to my book of the year recommendation…my book of the year for 2016 went to Yuval Noah Harari’s “Sapiens: A Brief History of Human Kind”, with Ray Dalio’s “Principles” up there as a very close second. The crown of 2017 goes to: Continue reading “32 Books I Read in 2017, and the Book of the Year Goes to…” →

Reading

Book Review: Hard Things vs. Leading

Good books come in pairs or bundles to enhance understanding of one or more interdisciplinary domains.

“The Hard Thing about Hard Things” (HTAHT) by Ben Horowitz (Co-Founder of VC Firm a16z) was the first book that I read in 2016. A week ago, I finished “Leading” by Sir. Alex Ferguson and Michael Moritz, former Manager of Manchester United and Chairman of Sequoia Capital respectively. Both books are about leadership/management and written by manager/investors, but their perspective and context to the topic are different. As a result, one gets different takeaways from reading both. If “HTAHT” is about growing a company from scratch that is constantly tittering on the brink of extinction, “Leading” is about inheriting a club and building a high-performance organization competing at the very upper echelon of professional soccer – the entrepreneur vs. professional manager perspective, though there are common threads. Continue reading “Book Review: Hard Things vs. Leading” →

Reading

Select Readings (Week 7/2017)

Just another article illuminating the slow-moving train wreck that is the Retirement Crisis in the U.S.: Two-Thirds of Americans Aren’t Putting Money in Their 401(k) (Putting this at the top of the reading list to call attention to the crisis. The U.S. 401K savings scheme is a classic example of good policy intentions meet a complex system – financial and societal – that changes over time and cause unintended consequences years down the road. Many FinTech start-ups are working on the savings and retirement problems from different angles, but we need both industrial and policy solutions to succeed)

2016 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholder Letter is finally here (Again Warren tore into the hedge fund industry for its collective under-performance and fee structure, and praised Jack Bogle as his business hero for bringing ultra-low-cost index fund products to the average Americans and in the process amassed only a tiny fraction of wealth vs. a typical money manager. In the end, Warren did offer an olive branch to Wall Street, Berkshire loves to pay fees as long as it is commensurate with the value it gets)

Continue reading “Select Readings (Week 7/2017)” →

Reading

Select Readings (week 6/2017)

Becoming Warren Buffet HBO Documentary (Focus, principle, persistence. Simple but not easy)

Charlie Munger  – Full Notes from Daily Journal Co. Annual Meeting and Full Video here (As always many quotables and nuggets of wisdom)

Charlie Munger said during the DJCO meeting that “India has taken the worst aspects of democracy.” Popular narrative likes saying India is the next China, here is a factual argument for Why India is not the Next China. (As an honorary brown person, I love my Indian friends will certainly re-visit the country)

John Hempton at Bronte Capital admits that He does not Understand the Indian Outsourcing Company Syntel (Saying I don’t know is a virtue, saying why I don’t know, and here is how unsure I am requires thinking)

While India was grappling with its rupee bill debacle, here is a fast and furious tour to The Lastest Tech Trends and Fads in China (Went back to China from Nov – Dec last year, met many start-up and VC friends. China is truly a parallel universe and counter-factual to the U.S.)

Y Combinator’s 2017 Annual Letter (Since 2005, has funded 1,470 companies with total valuation of $100B, less than half of Apple’s cash balance if that puts it into perspective. Letter touched upon the era of hyper-scale tech companies powered by network-effect like the FANG, where their advantages are still underappreciated by founders and investors alike, and they will get more powerful without antitrust actions, I will be a happy shareholder for now)

Speaking of FANG, rumor has it that Amazon is looking to buy Capital One, and how have they fared in financial services? (I think the author’s analysis need to be more rigorous. Using Tencent and Alibaba’s success in China to speculate or extrapolate U.S. Tech firm’s ambition and achievable scale in finance to me is naive. No, it’s unlikely they will play an important role in the financial ecosystem anytime soon in the same way that Alibaba has done in China. The fundamental market structures, regulations, and consumer behaviors are miles apart.) 

Micah Rosenbloom of Founder Collective chats with Harry Stebbings of Atomico about why $100 million is a good exit and why capital efficiency is key to returns and investment success in “20 VC: Micah Rosenbloom”

Last mention of Snap before its IPO: Mark Suster on Why He did not Invest in Snap and How He Feels Now, Professor Damodaran Valuing Snap before its IPO, Evan Benedict at A16Z and Ben Thompson at Stratechery each trying to frame Snap’s strategy (Mark did it with good grace and showed how hard it is to get out of your own narrative. While not a fan of DCF, it did provide a quick-and-dirty yardstick to judge value against. No, I am not buying Snap on the IPO, though funds in my 401K may)

Growth Hacker Andrew Chen on The Bad Product Fallacy

Reading

Select Readings (week 5/2017)

Baupost’s 2016 Year-End Letter – (Disclaimer: linking and may be unavailable soon)

Sequoia Fund’s 2016 Year-End Letter – (The famed fund fathered by Warren Buffett leaving the Valeant Saga behind, swapped Walmart with Amazon in the fall)

Bronte Capital’s 2016 Year-End Letter  – (John Hempton is long Bayer, so is David Einhorn, and thinks U.S. stock market is expensive but not so pricey to imply imminent permanent capital loss)

The must-read semi-annual Graham & Doddsville Newsletter Winter 2017 from students at Columbia Business School

A good introduction to the NYC FinTech Community, with suggested newsletters to stay abreast of the continuously evolving landscape

Cliff Asness’s thoughts on the DOL Fiduciary Rule and unintended consequences – (The Trump administration now wants to roll it back, many robo-advisor and robo-401K start-ups predicated their businesses on the fiduciary model and will make a stand, hear both sides. 40 years from now, we may see the robo-movement in the same light as the one John Bogle at Vanguard started 40 years ago )

An excellent overview of the Ocean Freight Shipping Industry from a VC perspective by Brian Laung Aoaeh at KCE Ventures, with great additional reference readings – (Publicly traded shipping stocks have been crushed in the past two years, time to look for contrarian bets?)

Start-ups, Wall Street wants your data! As always, a well-articulated post on alternative data business by Matt Turck at First Mark Capital

Helpful guide to SaaS entrepreneurs thinking of raising money in today’s environment SaaS Funding Napkin, the 2017 edition by Christoph Janz at Point Nine Capital

Snapchat IPO: Too Soon? – (Future Facebook or Twitter? Let the market be the judge)

 

Reading

Continuous Learning: 28 Books I Read in 2016

Evolution, the natural movement toward better adaptation to reality, is one of the greatest forces in the universe. Evolution leads to improvement, improvement helps one get what he/she wants. Thus the desire to evolve is probably humanity’s most universal driving force, and continuous personal evolution is one of the greatest rewards by itself. In order to better adapt to reality, one has to have an accurate understanding of it. Reading and reflecting is a shortcut to gaining knowledge about how society and the universe work. Below are 28 books that I read in 2016 across a range of domains. I don’t think I am any smarter, but I am certainly more knowledgeable than a year ago, or rather more aware of my ignorance…
In 2017, I think I will slow down my pace of reading and instead devote more time to each book, and re-visit some books read in the past. After a year of voracious reading, I found my knowledge retention was not very satisfactory. Writing a book review is a good exercise but a bit too time-consuming and less economic given my slow speed of writing. A habit that I will start to form is to write down a few key unconventional ideas from each book. Peter Thiel asked an interesting and really hard question in the opening of his book “Zero to One”:

“What important truth do very few people agree with you on?”

I think that is a good filter to start with to select my key takeaways. Continue reading “Continuous Learning: 28 Books I Read in 2016” →

Reading

How to be a better “Mind Reader”

A year ago, my former manager (now partner) at Accenture, Bogdan Konsur, gave me this book written by Chicago professor Nicholas Epley. After graduating from CBS, I finally had time to read it and found it very interesting and insightful. The book is based on studies of neuroscience and psychology, and is filled with experiments of how the human mind works and how its inherent limitations could cause misunderstandings of others. Here are my key takeaways:IMG_2135-0

How to be a better “mind reader”? Put less effort on trying to read others’ body language or “putting yourself in their shoes,” this amounts to little more than imagination and guess work, and could exaggerate misunderstandings. Instead, try harder to GET another person’s perspective instead of trying to TAKE it.

Imagining/guessing is easy because it is quick and often works reasonably well based on one’s own mind, stereotypes about others’ mind, and others’ observed actions, but each of these are simplifying heuristics that give imperfect insights. Asking is a slower and harder process therefore a path taken less often, but it is the way you understand people more accurately, and the way you solve their problems more effectively.
Continue reading “How to be a better “Mind Reader”” →