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Recommendations

Things I’ve recommended to friends.

Books

Romances/Sci-Fi

Product Development and Tech

Other

  • How to Avoid a Climate Disaster - An amazing lesson on breaking down complex problems.

  • Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder - The book is terribly written and I didn’t like the author’s tone. But the contents of this book lingered in my mind for longer than I thought and made me update some mental models I had regarding how to invest my time professionally (no more startup equity focus as I can’t do like a VC that bets on 10+ startups at the same time)

  • Berkshire Hathaway Letters to Shareholders - 47 years of letters and not a single year you see Warren focusing on what the media was focusing at that time. Made me learn to ignore headlines talking about Warren/Berkshire, as they are usually just click baits.

  • How to Win Friends & Influence People - I read this a long time ago and I think it made a huge impact on how I communicate with people.

  • Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story - Taught me the importance of supporting and promoting the projects you’re part of beyond what you are expected (their success is your success).

  • The Way of the Superior Man - Lots of weird woo woo stuff in here, but gave me a good mental model for balancing periods of intense goal pursuit with periods of uncertainty on what to do next.

  • Autobiography of a Yogi - if you’re looking for some spirituality stuff to read, I’d recommend this book.

  • Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind - Made me realize that my current spiritual beliefs are a product of the current economic/political system. (and that’s ok, but it’s good to know so you can decide for yourself)

  • The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships - super fun read and made me do good reflections on my own baggage/traumas.

Podcasts

  • 13 minutes to the moon - The story of the people who made Apollo 11 happen. A really good podcast if you love engineering.
  • Peak Salvation - High achiever software engineer (ex-Microsoft and ex-Meta, millionaire) works at an Amazon warehouse during Peak (the company’s busiest season from Black Friday to Christmas) and documents his journey. Super interesting to see him using his software engineer and managing experience to over-analyze (in a good way) every step of the process, also comparing the huge differences between his previous high paid/high status work life and now.
  • Acquired - Two really smart and fun guys do independent deep research on the history of a given company then sit down to tell it’s story and share what they found with the audience and with each other. Best episodes so far:
    • Coca-Cola: Loved to learn the background from where Coke came from (a pick-me-up medicine to cure headaches, fatigue, and morphine addiction aimed at the Civil War veterans) and that the blind testing showing that Pepsi had a better taste was discovered by Coke 20 years prior to Pepsi finding out about it and creating the Pepsi challenge (and that it didn’t matter in the end)
    • Microsoft: Interesting to learn about the Steve Ballmer era. How the stock market totally ignored Microsoft at that time because it was focused on more exciting stocks while Ballmer was focusing on the boring but profitable enterprise software and how he actually setup microsoft for success in the AI era by his investments in server infrastructure and increasing Microsoft financial reserves.
    • Google and Nvidia episodes: Really good background on what enabled the LLM tech to emerge.

Newsletter

  • Farnam Street - The only newsletter I subscribe to. Weekly dose of useful mental models and insights. (hint: you will be constantly reminded on the importance of focusing on positioning yourself so that what you want to happen, happens anyway)

Courses