Johanna

There are two possible mistakes you can make — you can either hire the wrong person or fail to hire the right one. None of us like to say no, but you should bias toward the latter. And doing so early in the process, even with limited data, saves time for everyone, including the candidate.

For hunter-gatherers, chiefs and shamans could, and did, moonlight as foragers and hunters. Overlapping duties preserved a strong sense of community, reinforced by customs and religions that obscured individual differences in strength, skill, and ambition. Shared labor meant shared values.But in industrial economies, lawyers don’t tag in for brain... See more

There's another trait on the side which I want to talk about; that trait is ambiguity. It took me a while to discover its importance. Most people like to believe something is or is not true. Great scientists tolerate ambiguity very well. They believe the theory enough to go ahead; they doubt it enough to notice the errors and faults so they can... See more

There is a great conflict between two of the most pressing problems of our time: poverty and climate change. To avoid global warming, the world needs to massively reduce CO2 emissions. But to end poverty, the world needs massive amounts of energy. In developing economies, every kWh of energy consumed is worth roughly $5 of GDP.

Your “team” will look more like a tribe. It could include strangers, a cohort that meets periodically, or the actual people employed by your company. Regardless of who these people are, your “team” will be your accountability partners, un-blockers, and social community.

Whenever possible (and it’s almost always possible), have someone do a day or two of work with you before you hire her; you can do this at night or on the weekends.

In order to improve allocation, we should pay attention to funding models. We may want to improve the models we have, or reallocate our portfolio of them, or bring back old ones that we have left behind, or invent new ones.