alex
@alexwastaken
curious librarian
alex
perspectives on funding and venture capital (VC)
perfect formula, and the opposite of how VC-backed founders think
Epic post on how Nike lost $25B in a day by trying to make everything data-driven:
"Nike invested billions into something that was less effective but easier to measure vs something that was more effective but less easy to measure.
In conclusion: an impressive waste of money."... See more
21 best ideas in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay on Self Reliance (via justin murphy)
Most people do not trust their own beliefs. The essence of genius is simply to trust yourself—to infer that whatever seems most true in your heart is most true in reality—and for everybody else, too, despite whatever they may claim.
There is hardly anything more painful
For this purpose I also recommend Didion and Babitz by Lili Anolik, Heartburn by Nora Ephron (when you find out it’s about the guy who broke Watergate ...!!!!), Argonauts by Maggie Nelson, I Love Dick by Chris Kraus (this one made all the Semiotexte books feel like part of an extended cinematic universe). I’ve heard that Kathy Acker does this sort... See more
How i read
A great story about marketing and advertising:
About 80 years ago ad man Claude Hopkins had a major problem.
Here it is:
It was Hopkins' job to create advertising to sell Schlitz beer.
Schlitz, an unremarkable beer with nothing to recommend it over any other brew was ranked a miserable 15th in sales in the U.S. beer market.
Claude approached this
... See more“At the deepest level, you know what makes you happy and how to create your best possible life. That knowledge is coded into your very nature. But your nature is forever colliding with a force that can tear it apart: culture.”
― Martha Beck, The Way of Integrity: Finding the Path to Your True Self
