June 25 2018
Content
1. Life advice (Link)
Part of being an adult is consciously choosing and pruning your friends.
Friends of circumstance is some high school shit. Adults choose their allies.
2. Keith Rabois’ investment criteria (Link)
Keith is an extremely successful and thoughtful investor. This is high signal.
3. On evaluating talent (Link)
Keith Rabois on how you can evaluate if a founder is great at hiring:
Scrutinize the core team already assembled.
Ability to articulate the vision compellingly and sell.
Ability to assess talent. (More critical and often neglected step).
Recognition of what “great” and high performance means.
All excellent companies have founders that are excellent at hiring. But, you can learn some of these skills later, when you need to hire.
4. What makes a great founder (Link)
What makes a good founder? If there were a word that meant the opposite of hapless, that would be the one. Bad founders seem hapless. They may be smart, or not, but somehow events overwhelm them and they get discouraged and give up. Good founders make things happen the way they want. Which is not to say they force things to happen in a predefined way. Good founders have a healthy respect for reality. But they are relentlessly resourceful. That’s the closest I can get to the opposite of hapless. You want to fund people who are relentlessly resourceful.
Awesome. Eric Weinstein might say “ultra-high agency.”
5. On the value of discipline (Link)
Interesting that too much inspiration can be detrimental to (traditionally defined) success. Repetition and execution are essential.
“The smart thing in the art world is to have one good idea and then never have another” Brian Eno
This is something I really struggle with. I hate repetition.
The way out is structured repetition of a discovery process, and partnership with people better at execution.
Ideas and strategy are critical. But so is execution.
Please share with friends (or not if you do not love this).