Category: Uncategorized
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Why Experts Are the Worst Teachers
About twenty years ago, I developed a repetitive stress injury from playing guitar. I was in a band, and I had to quit. The pressure I had to apply to the fretboard created a tendon issue that just wouldn’t go away. But I wasn’t ready to walk away from music entirely. If I couldn’t play guitar, I figured I’d get into electronic music. So I bought a copy of Reason, a program used by music producers to make beats.
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The Last Moat
At AI Innovation Week in Mexico, we explored a counterintuitive idea: As AI makes public knowledge cheap, relationships and unspoken knowledge rise in value. This piece explores that concept through the lens of a hedge fund manager’s rogue approach to the Enron collapse.
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Mexico Stories and Observations
I just wrapped up AI Innovation Week at IPADE—Mexico’s most prestigious business school—across their Mexico City and Monterey campuses. The formal recap is on my work site. But here on the personal website, I share the things that caught my attention during my time south of the border. Read on for the interesting and unusual, from the witchraft market to the grandma who tried to seduce me.
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A Simple Rule for Managing Complexity: The Double Cushion
My favorite business school professor made good money managing extreme complexity: he oversaw consulting gigs involving multimillion dollar real estate purchases, factory operations with thousands of employees, and complicated mergers. He seemed to be able to see around corners.
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It’s Perfectly Fine that Origin Stories are Lies
Blockbuster charged Reed Hastings a $40 late fee, which inspired him to found Netflix. Pierre Omidyar’s wife wanted to trade Pez dispensers online so he spent a weekend building a side project that became eBay. On a trip to Paris, Uber founder Travis Kalanick found himself stranded in the rain for 20 minutes trying to hail a cab. These are all good stories. And they are all lies.
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Go Bigger When You Talk About Your Ideas
A distillation of a talk I gave to the founders of Odisea’s Acelera program, a deep tech startup accelerator in Latam, about why aiming high increases your odds to success.
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The Best Conference of the Year (So Far)
After some conferences I just want to sit in a dark room and vegetate. Voltage Control’s Facilitation Lab Summit 2025 was different. Despite having to exert zero effort at meeting people, I left with a boatload of valuable connections. And this is why I’m calling it now: this is the best thing I will attend in 2025.
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Centuries Old Wisdom in MrBeast’s Leaked Playbook
Unlike polished press releases or glossy marketing assets, leaked documents are raw and unfiltered. As such, they give us a glance at the inner workings of a company. Take, for instance, the leak of the MrBeast Guide to Production.