Barrett Brooks is creating a truly great podcast. Why? 1. It's a natural outpouring of who he is. The podcast isn't a put-on or show, it's capturing a real connection. People gravitate to what is authentic. 2. He has a profound curiosity about people and the world, which leads him to do a ton of prep and ask unique questions you won't ...

In 1st year of airbnb they had 2 bookings. 2! Only 2. Wow! But that would change once they understood one thing: you should do things that don’t scale to get your first customers. This is just one example of things they did that didn’t scale. During Y Combinator the airbnb founders started to talk to their users (mainly in NYC). They l...

I was listening to Tim Ferriss’ podcast with Phil Libin the other day and wanted to share a small insight I found valuable. Hiroshi Mikitani (CEO at Rakuten) has a hypothesis that almost everything breaks when a company triples. How you communicate, how you manage your product, who makes decisions, and even small things like handling p...

I've found that concisely writing down memories, stories, and quotes shortly after they occur leads to a "slowing down time" effect. I use Apple's built-in notes app to capture each memory in one or two lines max. Short and sweet documentation is key because the higher the barrier the less likely I am to write it down. The slowing down...

Steve Jobs said he was best when 50% of his time was unscheduled. This is a little counter intuitive. It would seem that at a company the size of Apple he would need to constantly be in meetings in order to help with decisions and provide input and advice. But he had no need for constant meetings. He trusted his senior management team ...