I'm a fan of Michael Lewis's books, and I just finished reading The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds by Michael Lewis. I had enjoyed his book The Big Short before as well as some of his later ones.

This one focused on the unique relationship between Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, who conducted some of the most impactful psychological research over the past 50 years, coining now-famous effects like framing, endowment, and others. Daniel's book Thinking, Fast and Slow was an amazing treatise in psychological research and cognitive biases and errors.

This book by Lewis had its focus less on the research and more on the backgrounds of the two protagonists and their intensely creative and productive relationship, as well as the problems it eventually ran into. The title refers to how our minds often use fantasy to try to "undo" parts of reality, and that creates various feelings like frustration, regret, and envy (and how a lot of this wishful thinking is very human but not very rational).

I enjoyed the book and reading the stories about how these guys got started, met, and worked together. My full notes are below.

A while ago, I had read a newspaper article about parenting books inspired by different foreign countries. One of the books mentioned was There's No Such Thing as Bad Weather: A Scandinavian Mom’s Secrets for Raising Healthy, Resilient, and Confident Kids by Linda Akeson McGurk. I recently read it and enjoyed it, though it has a lot of overlap with other parenting books I had read before, such as Einstein Never Used Flashcards, Bringing up Bebe, and How to Raise an Adult. The main title of this book also reminds me of similar lessons about always playing outside despite any weather in The Art of Learning.

What I most enjoyed in the book were the various actual stories and details about schools and outdoor activities in Sweden, such as forest schools and various traditional games and groups that meet and enjoy the outdoors. I felt that most of the book could be summarized very succinctly and went on too long about pretty simple points (spend more time outside, less screen time, free range parenting, etc.). Nonetheless, it was an enjoyable read, even though I learned fewer new things from it that I hadn't heard of before.

My notes on the book are below.

My first two tech startups were AMA (finance) and Ridacto (legal). I'm proud of and have learned a ton of lessons working on those.

This month I began embarking on my third startup adventure: Epirus. I've joined as Co-Founder and COO.

Epirus is a venture-backed startup specializing in agile development of advanced defense systems. The team combines decades of aerospace & defense experience with Silicon Valley innovation in order to address 21st century threats, such as drones and other asymmetric technologies. The company name is inspired by the story of the mythical king Theseus who defended Athens with a bow that had an infinite cache of arrows called the Epirus bow.

​I wasn't really looking to work on anything new when I got a call somewhat out of the blue from a close college friend who had worked for over a decade at traditional defense contractors. He wanted to start a new type of defense company to protect against drones, and he wanted help on software, operations, and building a culture of innovation. That's where he thought I could help.

I had always been interested in drones and working on software applied to challenges in the physical world. I knew absolutely zero about the defense space and was somewhat weary about that. Getting to know the rest of the team sold me on the opportunity because I was blown away by the technical rigor and awesomeness of my teammates (100+ patents, awards, etc.). And the excitement and support by 8VC was very encouraging.

This is somewhat different from my other startups in a number of ways: traditional venture backing, my role as COO and sidekick to other amazing co-founders (as opposed to CEO or the first founder/co-founder), bigger team, and totally new industry/market for me. For me, this is an opportunity to learn a ton about a brand new space and build something awesome from the ground up, which I love doing. Go Epirus!

P.S. Epirus is hiring!