Max Mednik
  • Home
  • About
  • Interests
    • Angel investing
    • Magic
    • Scuba Diving
  • Blog
  • Contact

Readings and musings

Notes on Bold by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler

3/26/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture
Last year I enjoyed reading Abundance by this same pair of authors, and earlier this year I heard that the "sequel" was coming out soon. And now I just finished reading that sequel, Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World.

I actually liked this second book a lot more as it went into much greater depth on a few important advances and actually gave lots of details and advice on how to execute on big ideas step by step. I also really enjoyed the specific anecdotes and transcripts of launch announcements, emails, blog posts, etc. that people have used successfully in the past. The book does a great job cataloguing the best practices and tools people use to get stuff up and running quickly and inexpensively; it's a great inspiration to kick your butt in gear and just work on SOMETHING.

I enjoyed learning more about the founding ideas behind Google X and other corporate skunk works in the past. I also liked the enumeration of Peter's own personal collected wisdom and sayings ("Peter's Laws"). I was personally really impressed with what I learned about the state of 3D printing, what's been achieved, and how it's even feasible leveraging the cloud and the crowd. I really want to investigate that further myself and tinker in that space.

Below are some of my notes and takeaways.

Intro: birth of exponential entrepreneur
Exponential technology is like an asteroid threatening the dinosaurs
The worlds biggest problems are the biggest business opportunities
Manual for exponential entrepreneur

Part 1 exponential technology 

1 goodbye linear thinking 
Kodak intended modern photography
Its inventors created digital camera but buried and ignored it
Cornered by the market
Didn't realize what exponential growth would do
6 d
Digitalization
Spreads ideas
Free to reproduce and share
Deception
Initial progress seems slow because numbers small
But doubling quickly overcomes this with patience 
Disruption
Breaks old businesses
Demonetization
Removal of money from equation
Free
Give stuff away
Shadow economy
Dematerialization
Disappearance of actual old physical goods
Democratization
Hard costs drop so low that available for everyone 
Exponential organization 
Leverage networks and crowd
Instagram
The question is scale
Quirky: crowd sourced product development and invention
Air bnb
Über 

2 exponential technology
Finding tech at cusp between deceptive and disruptive
Public sentiment initially drops
Nice new interface helps accelerate development
3d printing
Tools created subtractive manufacturing
Invention of addictive manufacturing 
Fully customized products
Cubesats
Made in Space
Printing on ISS
MakeU labs
Cloud printing on others' 3d printers
Customized products

3 five to change the world
Networks and sensors
Infinity computing and beauty of brute force
Autodesk
Computing not scarce
Ai: expertise on demand
Watson on cloud
Modernizing medicine app for derm
Jarvis user interface
Robotics
Robo jockeys for camel racing
Genomics and synthetic biology

Part 2; bold mindset

4 climb on bold
Skunkworks
Kelly Johnson 14 rules of skunk
Business as unusual
High hard goals
Autonomy, mastery, and purposes
Google X
Progress must be measurable
10X goal
Googles eight innovation principles
Focus on the user
Share everything
Look for ideas everywhere
Think big but start small
Never fail to fail: fail fast and forward
Spark with imagination, fuel with data
Be a platform
Have a mission that matters
Flow states have triggers, requires focus
Environmental triggers
High consequences and risks
Rich environment: novelty, unpredictability, complexity
Psychological triggers
Clear goals: sub goals; emphasis on the clear; challenging but manageable
Immediate feedback; daily reviews 
Challenge skill ratio; midpoint between boredom and anxiety
Social triggers: group flow
Serious concentration
Shared clear goals
Good communication and immediate feedback
Equal participation
Element of risk
Familiarity and common language
Blended egos and humility
Sense of control
Closeness and being in real time
Always say yes and
Creative triggers: increase the amount of novelty in your life

5 The secrets of going big
Born above line of super credibility
Want to launch way above line of credibility so obvious to PPl they should get involved 
Shift audience mindset from probabilities to implications
Familiarity matters: start with ppl who already know ur skills
Slow down and study feasibility
Staging ur ideas
Sub goals
How to make stone soup: passion is what starts project and others contribute things they think of
Passionate ppl are beacons attracting others
Asked for rfps and got others to contribute 
Peter's laws: mindset matters; write down your own laws to have external hard drive when ur internal one is guaranteed to crash (to avoid fight/flight/freeze)
If anything can go wrong, fix it
Best way to predict future is to create it yourself
When faced without a challenge, make one; need to be alive to stay alive 
No simply means begin one level higher
When given a choice take both; multiple parallel projects
The ratio of something to nothing is infinite; doing something better than nothing
Expert is someone who can tell you how something can't be done
Multiple projects lead to multiple successes
Start at the top then work your way up
Do it by the book but be the author
When forced to compromise ask for more
If u can't win change the rules
If u can't change the rules then ignore them
Perfection is not optional
Don't walk when u can run
When in doubt, think
Patience is a virtue but persistence to success is a blessing
Squeaky wheel gets replaced
Faster u move, slower time passes, longer u live
U get what u incenticize
If u think it's impossible then it is for u
Day before something is a breakthrough it's a crazy idea
If it was easy it would have been done already
Without a target u miss it every time
Fail early, fail often, fail forward
If u can't measure it u can't improve it
Most precious resource is persistent and passionate human mind
Bureaucracy conquered with persistence, confidence, bulldozer

6 billionaire wisdom: thinking at scale
Elon musk
Passion and purpose
Start with first principles
Loss aversion and narrow framing: think more broadly
Think probabilistically
Richard Branson
Having fun and giving others fun
Experimental customer service
Risk mitigation 
Jeff bezos
Long term thinking, market leadership, focus on what will not change over next 10 years 
Customer centric thinking
Larry page
Why not and why not bigger 
Healthy disregard for impossible
Toothbrush test 
Even when fail to do something ambitious, u end up doing something important

Part 3 the bold crowd

7 crowdsourcing
Size of crowd will double
Comm tech improving exponentially
New tech from before accessible to masses
Case study 1
Freelancer.com: coding and design, science 
Case study 2
Tongl: creative ads
Case study 3
Recaptcha and duolingo
Crowdsourcing tasks
Microtasks and macro tasks
Creative and operational assets
Caddle
Topcoder
Testing and discovering insights
utest
Abundancehub.com
Crowdsourcing.org
Crowdsortium
Establish context and be specific
Prepare your data set
Qualify your workers and give a few a trial run 
Define clear simple roles
Communicate clearly, in detail, and often
Don't micromanage; encourage new ways of thinking
Pay to play; go for quality first, price will be low no matter what 
Prepare for flood of ideas
Be open to new working methodologies

8 crowdfunding
Provides social proof
Donation: charity
Debt: microlending 
Equity
Reward
Pebble watch
Late prototyping stage
Product is community focused and consumer facing
Market validation and real demand measurement
Stepping stone to raising bigger funding
Development of paying customer community
Cheap cac
How to guide for execution
Scarcity in rewards
Key team members
Use language with Reciprocity, social proof, liking, authority
Put faces to ideas in video
Affiliates, advocates, activists
Launch announcement critical
Sample emails to supporters
Live streaming
Trend surfing, keywords
Upselling

9 community
DIY community and exponential community 
Galaxy zoo
Citizen science website
Law of niches: u are not alone in oddball interest 
Locomotors 
Underserved pent up need and fantasy
Topcoder
9 stages of community building

10 incentive prizes
Clear goal
Freedom from bureaucracy
Linked new business opportunity
HeroX


0 Comments

Authors@Google Talk: Mick Ebeling - Not Impossible

3/13/2015

0 Comments

 
Back in January, I hosted Mick Ebeling at Google LA for an Authors@Google talk.

Mick is an award-winning film/television/commercial producer, philanthropist, idea-generator, and author. He discussed the maker movement and his new book Not Impossible: The Art and Joy of Doing What Couldn't Be Done. It was inspirational and really made me wonder how I too can make a similar big impact.
0 Comments

Notes on In The Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick

3/11/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture
I just finished reading In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick. It was a gory, wild tale of the Nantucket whaling ship attacked by a whale, where only a few sailors barely survived to tell the tale. The story was riveting and unbelievable and was the inspiration for Melville's Moby Dick.

It really got me thinking about the intensity of human clinging to life and ability to withstand extreme conditions. I can't believe how unlucky and lucky the survivors were at the same time: the captain managed to be on TWO whaling boats that sunk over the course of his career and yet managed to be saved by randomly passing ships. I was impressed with the sailors' abilities to rig up their lifeboats for sailing thousands of miles and to figure out where in the world they were without GPS/radio/etc.

The in-depth details of whale and tortoise killings (as well as the cannibalism) were my least favorite parts of the book, though they showed me how deeply the author researched the story. I was sad to read about how xenophobia, racism, and disrespect for animals got these sailors into such trouble.

Overall, it was a very entertaining story, and below are some of my notes.

Preface
Whaling industry
Inspiration for Melville and moby dick

1 Nantucket island
Superstitious about the sea
Whale oil
Separate island culture
Equal pay for blacks 
Minimal pay for years of work with only months at home 

2 countdown 
Not following safety procedures in storm
Aggressive decision making 
No margin for error 

3 first blood
Special language for spotting whale
There she blows
Bloodlust for whale
Minuscule food provisions 

4
Mysteries in the Galapagos
Problems on the ship
Collecting tortoises for food and oil like with whales

5
Enormous size of pacific
No caution in whale boats
Noticed whale near them but didn't try to avoid
Whale rammed ship
Largest brain of any mammal
Echolocation and clicks to communicate

6 the plan
Avoided unknown islands like Tahiti which they were afraid of but much closer to them
Suspicions of unknown
Xenophobia
Democratic leadership worse in disasters than authoritarian

7 at sea
Daily rituals and log keeping for sanity
Salvaged items and rigged up ghetto mast
Damaged food provisions and thirst
Prayer meetings
Instinct to keep clinging together
Could've stopped at Society Islands but decided to go on at sea

8 centering down

9 there is land
Found island
Afraid of savages
Had to leave island again for real settlement

10 whisper of necessity
Deaths to starvation

11 games of chance
Leadership in impossible circumstances
Shackleton
Narrow hopes bound us to life (job)
Casting lots to kill one to save others: one for who would die and who would kill 
But games of chance not allowed for Quakers

12 in the eagle's shadow
Active passive approach to survival
Give yourself up to what happens
Found ship randomly sailing nearby when we're just about to die

13 homecoming
Both ships saved by other ships
Those left on island saved as well
Public judging those who resorted to cannibalism
Saved sailors returning home and telling story
Went back to sailing

14 consequences
Lunar observations to determine longitude
New ship hit coral reef
Had to be saved again
Melville joined as sailor and read account of Essex
Sailors coming back to new children of theirs
Huge fire in Nantucket
Whale population resilient but became angrier
Another boat broken by whale in same waters

Epilogue: bones
Beached whale
Bones are all that are left

0 Comments
<<Previous

    Archives

    June 2021
    May 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    April 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    March 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010
    May 2010
    April 2010
    March 2010
    February 2010

    Categories

    All
    Angel Investing
    Cacti
    Cars
    China
    Community Service
    Culture
    Design
    Djing
    Dogs
    Education
    Entertainment
    Entrepreneurship
    Family
    Finance
    Food
    Google
    Happiness
    Incentives
    Investment Banking
    Judaism
    Law
    Lighting
    Magic
    Marketing
    Medicine
    Networking
    Nolabound
    Philosophy
    Professionalism
    Psychology
    Reading
    Real Estate
    Religion
    Romance
    Sales
    Science
    Shangri-La
    Social Entrepreneurship
    Social Media
    Sports
    Teams
    Technology
    Travel
    Turtles
    Ucla
    Venture Capital
    Web Services
    Weddings
    Zen

    Subscribe

    RSS Feed

Picture
Picture
  • Home
  • About
  • Interests
    • Angel investing
    • Magic
    • Scuba Diving
  • Blog
  • Contact