What’s Nextby Jordan Gonen
by Jordan Gonen
Hi 👋 Happy Monday! Lots of interesting content in this week’s newsletter, hope you enjoy.
Question for you…what early-stage company are you most excited about right now?
11.27.2017
Articles to Read.
The Code of Hammurabi: The Best Rule To Manage Risk:
Almost 4,000 years ago, King Hammurabi of Babylon, Mesopotamia, laid out one of the first sets of laws.
Hammurabi’s Code is among the oldest translatable writings. It consists of 282 laws, most concerning punishment. Each law takes into account the perpetrator’s status. The code also includes the earliest known construction laws, designed to align the incentives of builder and occupant to ensure that builders created safe homes.
Three important concepts are implicit in Hammurabi’s Code: reciprocity, accountability, and incentives.
[video] How Job Surveillance is Transforming Trucking
The first time I meet you, you are a single data point. A dot. I have no reference point from which to judge whether you were higher on the y-axis 3 months ago or lower. Because I have no observation points from the past, I have no sense for where you will be in the future. Thus, it is very hard to make a commitment to fund you.
For this reason I tell entrepreneurs the following: Meet your potential investors early. Tell them you’re not raising money yet but that you will be in the next 6 months or so. Tell them you really like them so you want them to have an early view (which is what all investor’s want). When you’re with them lower the bar by telling them, “we haven’t shipped product yet, we have lots of decisions still to make, but we’d like to show you our prototype” or obviously if you’re more advanced show what you have and what your roadmap looks like.
There’s a magnificent exercise that I like to do for myself on a periodic basis. I’m sure it has a more formal name but I call it “Good Bad Like Dislike.”
Interview with “the guy who sells your phone number to telemarketers”:
Robocalls are so infuriating — especially if they won’t stop calling no matter how many times you say you’re not interested — that it’s easy to forget there are real people around the world keeping the telemarketing industry alive by placing the calls, maintaining the lists of numbers they dial, and servicing the products and scams the calls offer.
This seller identified himself as “Brian Masin” and he claimed to be based in the D.C. metro area and to have been working in the spam world since 2003, though phone number lists are “maybe 5 percent of my biz,” he said. He agreed to answer some of our questions via Skype chat. “I have been sued by the best of them in the past,” he said, “so ask away.”
The core safety features on any modern vehicle have been around for decades, the seatbelt and the airbag. But while seatbelts haven’t changed much, airbags have changed a lot since they were first introduced. But do you know how they work and what some of the latest advances in this technology are? Let’s take a look.
Sears’ History Predicts Amazon:
Why is Amazon looking more and more like an old-fashioned retailer? The company’s do-it-all corporate strategy adheres to a familiar playbook — that of Sears, Roebuck & Company. Sears might seem like a zombie today, but it’s easy to forget how transformative the company was exactly 100 years ago, when it, too, was capitalizing on a mail-to-consumer business to establish a physical retail presence.
To understand Amazon — its evolution, its strategy, and perhaps its future — look to Sears.
[video, Best Salesman in the World]
(from 1985) Microsoft Has It All:
By all accounts, the Microsoft Corporation, the first major company spawned by the personal computer to reach its 10th birthday, has a lot to celebrate. Clearly the company has prospered, with revenues leaping by more than 40 percent in its last fiscal year. It has by far the broadest product line among software companies. And recently it signed a long-term agreement with the International Business Machines Corporation that is seen as cementing Microsoft’s position at the center of the personal computer universe.
More:
– Why I’m Leaving Silicon Valley (not me)
– [guide] How to Get What You Want Professionally
– Welcome to the meeting, Alexa
– Can Tencent Save Snap?
– Monkey mind
– Brain implants boost memorySee My Full Reading List
You made it to the end! Thanks for reading 👋
If you enjoyed, would really appreciate if you shared this link!
Want to read more? I write daily, and tweet too!
My Update:
– I am curious about Groq — chip manufacturing the next big wave? Read more.
– What can I do to 10x helpfulness of this newsletter? Email me if you have ideas 🙂
– Hope you had a great Thanksgiving!
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Thanks for reading! Really hope you enjoyed! (If you did, would be really awesome if you could share this link with 5 friends)
– Jordan
Personal Website
By jordangonen on November 27, 2017.
Exported from Medium on February 17, 2018.