Interesting Articles Archives

Interesting Articles

Interview in Les Echos (in French): Tech will make the World a Better Place

Two weeks ago, I had the pleasure of hosting a salon dinner with members of French Founders prior to giving a keynote on the state and future of technology. It became quickly apparent that I was way ...

Venture Capitalists: change your life with Kushim

by Clément Aglietta Imagine how difficult it was for an empire to keep track of the birth rate, the size of harvests or the spoils from a conquest, with no writing system. In this era, certain...

Some thoughts on Trump’s surprising win

I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Connie Loizos from Techcrunch yesterday. Unsurprisingly the conversation rapidly veered towards discussing Trump's surprising win. I am reproducing our discu...

Ride-sharing is not killing car ownership

By Ale Resnik, Chief Executive Officer of Beepi Imagine it’s the year 2035. Gasoline engines are a thing of the past—replaced by electric propulsion. Cars no longer feature steering wheels, thank...

My Rematerialized Life

In October 2014, at the end of my Update on the Very Big Downgrade, I explained that the super high occupancy rates of high end hotels and Airbnbs in New York were forcing me to move location every f...

Life in 2030

I was recently interviewed by Alliancy to discuss the world in 2030. I am transcribing it below for your reading pleasure. INTERVIEW BY ISABELLE REPITON Alliancy magazine. What maj...

Great birthday wishes from Dazeinfo: Happy Birthday Fabrice Grinda: The Extraordinary Tech Entrepreneur

Dazeinfo wrote a really nice article for my birthday full of surprisingly accurate information. I recreated the blog post below for your reading pleasure. You can find the original at: http://dazeinfo...

Some Thoughts on the New York Times Styles Section Article

This goes to show there is no such thing as bad press. I made the cover of the New York Times Styles section last Sunday. Unfortunately the article fails to capture my life philosophy and unde...

Great Interview with La Tribune

La Tribune just published an interview where we discuss the nature of entrepreneurship, the necessity of failing in order to succeed and my current thinking about marketplaces. It’s a very flatteri...

How Technology Could Help Fight Income Inequality

I have had the pleasure of meeting professor Tyler Cowen a few times and always left my meetings impressed by his intellect. He writes the popular economics blog: Marginal Revolution. He just wrote a...

Correlation is not causation!

Always look at correlations in a critical light! US spending on science, space, and technology correlates with Suicides by hanging, strangulation and suffocation Number people who drowned by f...

Not a bad list to be part of :)

Techcrunch recently covered the venture investments of various investors in the fashion space. It's funny that it's basically a bunch of venture firms and me :) The table is actually missing my inves...

Larry Page’s story is fascinating

Nicholas Carlson just published a fascinating in depth article about Larry Page. It covers his evolution over the last 15 years. When he started out at Google, he was an immature CEO who fostered conf...

Fantastic article on how to build trust in modern marketplaces to achieve liquidity

Anand Iyer, the Chief Product Officer of Threadflip, just wrote a thoughtful blog post on how to build liquidity in modern marketplaces. In short: Create a managed environment Have an actionable...

Great presentations on Bitcoin

Bitcoin confuses people. They don't grasp what it is and how it works. The two presentations below are the best I have seen. They clearly present how Bitcoin works and analyze the opportunities in the...

50 reasons why this is the greatest time ever

In The Case for Optimism I outlined both why we are better off than we have ever been in history, especially if we live in the West, and why the future is so promising. USA Today, of all places, just ...

Henry Blodget’s Slides on the Future of Digital: 2013 are a must read

I have had the privilege to see Henry do his “Mary Meeker” impersonation as he effectively flies through 200 slides in less than 1 hour and it’s very impressive. He is articulate, clear and to t...

The cure for hubris

As a species and as individuals we are often shockingly arrogant. We believe, or want to believe, that as a species and individuals we are special. When we take a step back it’s truly horrifying to ...

Delusional optimism can go a long way!

As I have repeatedly observed both as an entrepreneur and angel investor if you believe in something strongly enough and fight for it beyond what most would consider reasonable, you can typically achi...

No Limits to Growth

Over the course of the last few years I resolved the cognitive dissonance between my short term pessimism about the economy and my personal optimism about humanity, the technology world I inhabit and ...

Absolute must read for all entrepreneurs!

James Altucher just published on Techcrunch a 100 point FAQ on starting an Internet business. It’s straight to the point and very clear. I basically agree with every point! All entrepreneurs should...

The end of an era!

PC World just exited the print market, marking the exit of the last general-interest PC magazine. I am actually surprised that it did not happen earlier. Magazines readership as a whole is declining a...

Fun interview in Le Monde

I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Benoit Hopquin from Le Monde last June while I was passing through Paris. He was interviewing a variety of people, Buddhist monks, retirees, etc., for a seri...

How to launch your startup

Paul Graham just published yet another must read blog post. This one is entitled Do Things that Don’t Scale. It’s essentially a how-to guide on launching your startup. He suggests eschewing the tr...

David Rowan’s experience at Singularity University is a must read for everyone interested in thinking and learning about the future!

I had the pleasure of chatting with David while at Martin Varsavsky’s Tech Talk Menorca and was fascinated by his recounting of his experience there. If you have a modicum of curiosity about the fu...

Fun interview with The Next Women

I had the pleasure of having a fun and engaging conversation with Beth from The Next Women. We covered a wide range of topics: What I have been up to since I left OLX How investing in Latin America d...

Bill Gurley’s thoughts on marketplaces are a must read!

As you can probably imagine given my recent blog post, Thoughts on building successful vertical marketplaces, marketplaces have been on my mind a lot of late. Last November Bill Gurley from Benchmark...

Is risk aversion really the fear of feeling?

Check out this interesting Harvard Business Review article: http://blogs.hbr.org/bregman/2013/05/the-unexpected-antidote-to-pro.html...

Great article on optimal take rates in Internet businesses

Bill Gurley is a partner at Benchmark and an investor and on the board of Uber, OpenTable and Zillow amongst others. He just wrote a fantastic article on the optimal pricing strategy for Internet busi...

Don’t blame the Internet for your failings!

Paul Miller, a technology writer for The Verge, decided to spend 365 days offline. No email, Google, Facebook, texting. He became entirely Internet free. As he puts it, he embarked in his journey beca...

The class notes from Peter Thiel’s Stanford class are a must read for all entrepreneurs

I just finished reading through all of them and found them very insightful. Some sections are useful to aspiring entrepreneurs as they cover the basics of financing, vesting, etc. Most sections are us...

The John McAfee story is fascinating!

I just came across his engrossing story in a recent copy of Wired. In many ways entrepreneurs, myself included, are a little bit crazy. However, after reading his story, I feel much more confident in ...

Further evidence suggesting consumer Internet series A financings are more difficult to come by

Fred Wilson just wrote an article, What Has Changed, in which he confirms the observation I made in a recent post (And then there were 100…) that Series A funding rounds are harder to obtain for con...

Fantastic interview about what may very well be my next car!

I had the pleasure of meeting both Ron Dennis and Frank Stephenson at the McLaren factory outside of London in August. When they spoke about their design and assembly philosophy, I was struck by how m...

I knew it all along: video games are great for you and allow you to live longer :)

Not only do games allow you to live longer, healthier life, recent scientific research suggests that intense game playing allow us to improve multitasking, decision-making and creativity. Watch Jane ...

Great Article on Steve Jobs’ “Wilderness Years”

The May issue of Fast Company has a great article on Steve Jobs’ “wilderness years”. This 1985-1996 period during which he was exiled from Apple is often seen as his least productive. However, t...

I love the details of this week's Economist cover!

...

To accomplish the impossible it helps not knowing something is impossible!

I loved the examples given in the article: http://www.inc.com/harvey-mackay/how-to-accomplish-the-impossible.html ...

Nibble on this :)

My “superstar” influences are appearing everywhere :) I even got cut into bite size pieces in a recent article on French entrepreneurs taking refuge in New York, for which I was not interviewed: �...

Great common sense advice from our elders

I really enjoyed this New York Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/health/elderly-experts-share-life-advice-in-cornell-project.html?_r=2&smid=fb-nytimes I loved this quote: "I chose to l...

What if the Secret to Success is Failure?

I highly recommend this amazing New York Times article on how to instill “performance character” (as opposed to “moral character”) in children. It shows how children can become more grateful a...

Must read article on America’s 21st century collapse!

I just came across this very well thought through article on everything that could go wrong for the US in the 21st century should we continue down the current path. It covers all aspects of the probl...

Just How Bad is Bad?

Great interview of Nouriel Roubini and Ian Bremmer in Foreign Policy. Read it at: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/08/05/just_how_bad_is_bad ...

Globalization is more fragile and less entrenched than you think!

I was shocked that the statistics I came across in a recent article in The Economist which presented Pankaj Ghemawat’s research on globalization. We seem to take it as a given that we live in a glo...

The Entrepreneur vs. The Strategy Consultant

My good friend Auren Hoffman just wrote a great article on the difference between entrepreneurs and McKinsey-type strategy consultants. Read it at: http://blog.summation.net/2011/02/entrepreneur.html...

The Sleepless Elite

There was a great article in this week’s Wall Street Journal on the 1 to 3 percent of the population who are “short sleepers”. They thrive on only a few hours of sleep per night without the need...

Lessons of a super tenacious first time entrepreneur

Read this amazing article by my good friend Xenios Thrasyvoulou, the Founder & CEO of Peopleperhour, one of my portfolio companies. He recalls his amazing journey in entrepreneurship and all the lesso...

How to buy respectability :)

If you share my quirky sense of humor, you will love this article from the Economist on how rogues, dictators, oligarchs and others can buy respectability. Read it at: http://www.economist.com/node/1...

There are fewer millionaires than you might think!

If you live in a city like New York with everyone is seemingly richer than you, you imagine that there must be millions of millionaires in New York alone. However, many high income individuals seeming...

Matthieu Ricard: The World’s Happiest Man

Ever since I saw Matthieu's great speeches on the habits of happiness, I was intrigued and interested in learning more. I recently came across an engaging article in Ode on Matthieu’s life story. ...

Unpopular Science

I just came across this amazing post by Christoph Niemann on the NY Times site at: http://niemann.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/25/unpopular-science/ I reproduce it here for your viewing pleasure: Wheth...

I knew massages were good for you! :)

It's not really a double blind controlled study and many of the benefits might come from just resting in a quiet room for an hour, but the positive evidence for light "Swedish" type massages is intrig...

Just Manic Enough: Seeking Perfect Entrepreneurs

I had written about how America’s success might be because America’s entrepreneurs are hypomanics (Hypomanics to the rescue :)). The New York Times just wrote a great article on hypomanic entrepr...

What to do with your millions

One of the wonders of entrepreneurship is that sometimes we can get lucky and make millions. Paul Buchheit wrote a good article on what to do when that happens. His advice is very practical and covers...

Great article on the future of startup funding: Founders vs. Angels vs. VCs!

Paul Graham wrote another great article on the future of startup funding. Read it at: www.paulgraham.com/future.html...

Great article on what happened to Yahoo

Paul Graham just wrote another fantastic article, this time covering what happened to Yahoo. Read it at: www.paulgraham.com/yahoo.html ...

Great article on love in Scientific American

The December issue had an interesting section on falling in love. My favorite article was actually "The Happy Couple" which explains how to stay in love. In short focus on the positive. There is no w...

College Will Kill Your Entrepreneurial Spirit While Simultaneously Turning You into a Worker Bee

This article tells a fascinating story of a journey of survival through entrepreneurship. The persistence and trial and error approach will ring true to all entrepreneurs. His conclusion does not appl...

How David beats Goliath

I just came across this great article by Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker. He explains why underdogs often beat favorites by breaking the rules. It's actually relevant for entrepreneurs as it emphas...

The 18 Mistakes that Kill Startups

This is an old article by Paul Graham (October 2006), but a must read for all entrepreneurs. Read it at: http://www.paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html...

New Year's resolution: Have more sex

You would think CNN started writing on my behalf. Right after they wrote an article explaining why girls in their early 20s should date me, they wrote an article explaining the benefits of having sex ...

Why girls in their early 20s should date me :)

Just when I thought I would have to come up with creative ideas, Simcha Whitehill comes up with all the right reasons for CNN Living :) Here are a few excerpts from the article 10 reasons why dating ...

Fantastic article on progress in The Economist

It deftly addresses why our modern view of progress is so dismal. Read it at: http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15108593...

Mortgage modifications have done more harm than good

I argued in a prior post that the best way to deal with a deflating bubble was not to try to reflate that bubble. Instead of letting the real estate market reach equilibrium by letting prices fall to ...

The cause of the financial crisis in one simple sentence :)

Read: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/14/opinion/14trillin.html?_r=3...

Why is the US birth rate falling? Children offer a decreasing return on investment :)

I have always been a fan of Ben Stein's articles. I find this one both intriguing and amusing: http://money.cnn.com/2009/08/31/magazines/fortune/children_value_benefits.fortune/index.htm...

The Man Who Made Too Much

The article is 9 months old, but extremely interesting and worth a read: http://www.portfolio.com/executives/features/2009/01/07/John-Paulson-Profits-in-Downturn/...

Interesting Article: Mark Zuckerberg: The evolution of a remarkable CEO

http://venturebeat.com/2009/10/02/mark-zuckerberg-the-evolution-of-a-remarkable-ceo/...

Great article on interviewing programmers

A must read: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing3.html...

This explains everything! :)

I just came across this great article which has me written all over it: Why The Smartest People Have The Toughest Time Dating ...

Happiness is a skill!

New scientific research that shows we can alter the emotional landscape of our brains from anxiety to happiness – and from almost any state to another state – by learning (and continuously practic...

Entrepreneurs: Global Heroes!

There is a great series of articles on entrepreneurship in the latest Economist. Check them out: http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13216025 ...

Interesting progress in the fight against HIV

Over the last 25 years, the fight against HIV has seemed hopeless. Every attempt at a vaccine or cure has failed miserably. Sometimes in science breakthroughs happen inadvertently. An AIDS patient who...

Fantastic presentation by Bill Gates at TED

I love his optimism! ...

The Eligible-Bachelor Paradox

Last Spring, Mark Gimein, who is usually more known for his investigative journalism, wrote an interesting article using game theory to explain why there are seemingly so few eligible male bachelors i...

Happiness is contagious!

A new study suggests that your happiness is heavily influenced by the happiness of the people around you. Read the article in the NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/05/health/05happy.html?_r=1&...

The incredible rise and fall of IGE

As a gamer and fan of marketplaces, I have followed with amazement the rise and fall of IGE (www.ige.com). It started as a marketplace for Everquest virtual goods and rapidly expanded to others, espec...

Homophily changes the way you think

Auren Hoffman wrote a fantastic article on how homophily – our tendency to become friends with people who are similar to us affects our health, music preferences, mood and political stance. It can a...

Talent is overrated!

I blogged a few times that, your level of natural talent notwithstanding, excellence is achieved through deliberate practice (A Star is Made, A Star is Made – Part 2, Gladwell on Genius). Deliberat...

The Bright Side

Fareed Zakaria wrote a fantastic article for Newsweek entitled "There Is a Silver Lining" where he argues the crisis will force the United States to confront its bad habits and will thus emerge from t...

A Fundraising Survival Guide

Paul Graham has a fantastic article on the perils of raising money and advice on how to best do it. Read it at: http://paulgraham.com/fundraising.html...

Why active entrepreneurs mostly invest in consumer Internet companies

My good friend Auren Hoffman just wrote an interesting article on why entrepreneurs end up investing mostly in consumer focused companies. As he points out, we have day jobs running our own companies ...

Tuesdays with Rupert

Vanity Fair has a fascinating article on Rupert Murdoch. Michael Wolff has been given unprecedented access to Murdoch for an upcoming biography. I was surprised by the picture that emerges of him as a...

What Makes Us Happy?

There is a great series of interviews on the topic of happiness on Ted.com. Check them out at: http://www.ted.com/index.php/themes/what_makes_us_happy.html ...

The Optimistic Thought Experiment

My friend Peter Thiel embarked on an interesting thought experiment to assess what must happen for an “optimistic” version of the future to unfold. The article is eye opening, depressing and fasci...

You are not as rational as you think you are!

There is more and more evidence that random factors can influence our decisions. Read this fantastic post by my friend Auren Hoffman on the topic: People are Highly Susceptible to Suggestion ...

Check out Dick Costolo's blog on entrepreneurship

One of my readers mentioned that he was also reading Dick Costolo's blog on entrepreneurship and found it extremely useful. I just checked it out and it's fantastic. The articles are well written and ...

What if the world’s best violinist played the world’s best violin at a subway stop?

Joshua Bell is an internationally acclaimed virtuoso. As part of a fantastic experiment in context, perception, public taste and priorities, Joshua Bell agreed to play his Stradivarius incognito at th...

The Black Hat Tax

My friend Auren Hoffman just wrote a very interesting article on the growing cost consumer Internet companies face fighting scamming, phishing, hacking and government requests. He estimates that it’...

Big bird brain :)

I read a lot of fascinating articles on Alex last September and never got around to writing about it. In case you have not read it yet, read the article below reposted from the New York Times: Alex W...

Men are from Video Games, Women are from Social Networks

Auren just wrote an interesting article analyzing the behavior pattern of men and women on social networks. Even though men and women both represent 50% of the users on social networks, women are much...

The Art of Designing Markets

As an economist by formation and at heart if not by trade, I have always been fascinated by how the creation of efficient markets can fundamentally improve welfare for all. This is one of the reasons,...

Recessions promote breakthrough innovations

Auren Hoffman wrote an interesting article a few weeks ago on how recessions can promote innovation. I can relate. When Zingy was created in July 2001, the mere mention that we were doing "telecom" an...

Stayin’ Alive

If like me, the concept of our mortality bothers you, be sure to check out Stayin’ Alive, an article on Ray Kurzweil, longevity and the singularity in the April 2008 issue of Wired. I doubt Kurzweil...

The type of article that stirs my feelings of mortality

Reading about astrophysics almost always makes me feel insignificant and oh so mortal. The article below proved no exception, especially given its bleak predictions, even if they are hundreds of billi...

The Prospects for Democracy in China

"Is China democratizing? The country's leaders do not think of democracy as people in the West generally do, but they are increasingly backing local elections, judicial independence, and oversight of ...

Great articles by fake Steve Jobs on Facebook and Google

Funny and insightful! Sandberg leaves for Facebook. Let's all recite Eric Schmidt's Serenity Prayer Eric Schmidt's Serenity Prayer...

If you are white and in graduate school you are a cliche :)

This article is hilarious: http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/2008/03/04/81-graduate-school/ Most of the posts are great as well! You can recognize yourself in some of the posts which is so hu...

Making economics relevant again

I just came across a great article in the New York Times. A few decades ago, economics mattered greatly with John Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman directly influencing policy decisions. In the last ...

Free Sex :)

With the growth of online advertising, many businesses are evolving from paid business models to free ad supported business models. The Economist had an interesting article on the topic in “The Worl...

While on the topic of startup valuations…

Paul Graham wrote these two interesting articles on the topic: How to Fund a Startup The Equity Equation...

The power of unintended consequences

The road to hell is paved with good intentions! In public policy above all else, I have often found that some of the best intentioned laws end up having the opposite effect and hurt the very constitue...

The power of great people (why “good enough” won’t cut it)

While on the topic of hiring, my friend Auren just wrote a great article as to why great people are so much more valuable than good people, especially for engineers. As Auren puts it: “In markets c...

Books that make you dumb :)

Virgil Griffith analyzed the top 10 books listed on Facebook by students in a college versus the average SAT scores for the school and the results are hilarious! The students in the schools with aver...

The secret to raising smart kids (and overcoming challenges)

I just came across a fascinating article in Scientific American on how one’s attitude towards intelligence dramatically impacts your performance in school and life. If you believe you have a set lev...

The power of regression analysis by Malcolm Gladwell

As Malcolm Gladwell expressed in a New Yorker article, when it comes to art, most people fall in the Hume camp of reasoning, but a defiant minority always falls in the Kames camp: “Something has lo...

Criminal Profiling is bogus by Malcolm Gladwell

I have always been a huge fan of Malcolm Gladwell’s New Yorker articles. He is the quintessential eclectic modern day intellectual. His recent article on criminal profiling is a case in point. He us...

Shocking research on continental European economics teaching

A recent article in the Financial Times showed that French and German schoolbooks demonize enterprise. As the article put it: “Students learn that companies destroy jobs, while government policy cr...

Why Early Stage Venture Investments Fail

Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures just wrote a great article on why early stage ventures fail. Check it out at: http://www.unionsquareventures.com/2007/11/why_early_stage.html ...

Meet the Paypal mafia

Fortune just covered Peter and his former Paypal crew. Read the article at: http://money.cnn.com/2007/11/13/magazines/fortune/paypal_mafia.fortune/index.htm?source=yahoo_quote ...

The pitfalls of marrying an entrepreneur

The Financial Times just ran a very interesting article on the pitfalls of marrying an entrepreneur. As they point out: We want to conquer the world and are willing to sacrifice almost everything, in...

Wine is a big scam!

My friend Auren Hoffman just posted an article arguing that wine is a big scam. Check it out, I love the sardonic tone: http://summation.typepad.com/summation/2007/09/wine-is-a-big-s.html...

Zero to $1 billion

Most business books cover what it takes for large businesses to get even larger. Very few have covered what it takes to go from $0 to $1 billion in revenues. David Thomson, a former McKinsey consultan...

Learn to speak another language: it’s good for you!

The BBC recently reported that people fluent in two languages rather than one were both sharper mentally and did not experience mental decline associated with age. If you needed another excuse to stu...

What Kind of Genius are You?

In a recent article I wrote how most successful entrepreneurs were not innate geniuses but got their success from relentless trial and error. As several of you pointed out, my description did not acco...

Create a back-up copy of your immune system

Reposted from New Scientist: http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/mg19426094.400?DCMP=NLC-nletter&nsref=mg19426094.400 IMAGINE having a spare copy of your immune system on ice, ready to replace...

Who’s Minding the Mind?

There is ever more evidence that we humans are extremely primitive. Psychologists are demonstrating time and time again how easy it is to prime us. In a recent example, college students were asked to ...

Ten Politically Incorrect Truths about Human Nature

Psychology Today has a great article on human nature. I am not sure I buy all the arguments – or at least not the explanations as everything does not revolve around sex – but it’s still intrigui...

Read Tony Blair’s essay in The Economist

Tony Blair is probably the most gifted politician of his generation. He is smart, open minded and a gifted orator. Moreover, I have repeatedly been impressed by his sense of purpose, decisiveness and ...

For the love of conferences :)

George Meyer just wrote an amazing satirical essay in the New Yorker on the addiction to conferences. Check it out at: http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2007/05/28/070528sh_shouts_meyer ...

Top 10 ways to make better decisions

As much as we think of ourselves as extremely rational and intelligent beings, there is a growing body of evidence that suggests otherwise. We are easily primed by things we hear or read. The decision...

Morality in Primates

The New York Times had a very interesting article on morality in primates. As many primates display empathy, understand who has done them favors, display altruistic behavior and take into consideratio...

Why people believe in God

The NY Times just published a great article called “Darwin’s God” discussing why people believe in God. It’s a great complement to reading the enlightening and entertaining “The God Delusion...

The benefits of intellectual curiosity

While true polymaths like Leonardo da Vinci are rare, there is an increasing body of evidence to suggest that having diverse interests makes you better in everything you do. To some extent, this is c...

The Real Thomas Crown Affair!

I count The Thomas Crown Affair with Pierce Brosnan as one of my favorite movies and was amused to read a NY Times article on Noah Charney who is essentially the real world version of the Rene Russo c...

Read New Scientist’s 50th Anniversary Special Edition

The predictions for the next 50 years by dozens of world class scientists are wide ranging and intriguing. The set of articles on the “big questions” is fascinating covering topics such as “Do w...

Amazing dog story

As a dog owner and lover, I am very moved by stories like this one: An 81-year old couple adopted a tiny abused puppy ten years ago. The puppy grew up to be a 160-pound dog (shepherd/wolf cross) tha...

The Red Carpet Syndrome

Einat Wilf, a young up and coming Israeli politician and intellectual, wrote an interesting article a few years ago on the sense of entitlement that easily becomes engrained in smart and talented peop...

A Star is Made – Part 2

After the recent article in the New York Times by the Freakonomics authors arguing that high performance is due to “deliberate practice” rather than innate talent, further evidence is emerging. Th...

Lessons in life: the humbling transformation of Andre Agassi

I just read Gary Smith’s amazing mini-biography of Andre Agassi in Sports Illustrated. The story of his rise to the top, his fall and rebirth is fascinating and humbling. Few people are able to chan...

Live long? Die young? The answer is not in your genes

My last posting showed how deliberate practice overwhelms differences in natural ability to explain the success of top performers which led to the conclusion that you have to do what you love and love...

A Star is Made

If like me you loved the inquisitive mindset in Freakonomics where the authors ask numerous unrelated questions of how the world works, you will find the following article fascinating. Stephen Dubner ...

The state of sleep research

Recent developments in sleep research are extremely interesting. The two most interesting findings are on the importance of non-REM sleep in memory formation and studies on Modafinil and CX717 in pr...

Deathstyles of the Rich and Famous

The recent Slate article on the deathstyles of the rich and famous is hilarious. I suppose, I found it all the more amusing as I am an adventure traveler who in the past 12 months explored the Sahara ...

Window to the future

People are notoriously bad at predicting the future further than a few years down the line. We think geometrically and have a really hard time dealing with exponential growth. As a result it’s hard ...

Electrify your brain

It sounds crazy, but there is significant evidence that passing a weak current through your brain can significantly increase your cognitive abilities and alertness. You can read the full article in N...

A more sophisticated take on nature vs. nurture

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/23/magazine/23wwln_idealab.html?pagewanted=all In a widely-discussed 2003 article, he found that, as anticipated, virtually all the variation in I.Q. scores for twins i...

Narcissistic Leaders: The Incredible Pros, The Inevitable Cons

I thought many of you would enjoy the irony of my posting this :) Freud has been proven wrong time and time again, but this analysis published in the January 2000, Harvard Business Review seems dead ...