Latest Posts

• Book of the Week: Life in Motion

  Life in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina is about Misty Copeland’s journey through adversity to become a principal ballerina. I first heard about her in an NPR interview. She was featured in an under armour commercial. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY0cdXr_1MA&w;=560&h;=315] Oh, and yeah, she’s black too.

• Book of the Week: The Language of Food

  Dan Jurafsky taught a class, wrote a blog and book on The Language of Food. If you want to get a feel for the book, you can watch a talk he gave at Wit.ai. If you’re from San Francisco, reading the book will give you a bit of nostalgia since he mentions a lot of places to eat. If you speak many foreign languages, you’ll get a lot of the references and see the connections. Looking at the language of food helps you understand how we are all connected. There’s a chapter explaining how ketchup came from Chinese fish sauce. The book is nice break from looking at language from a statistical point of view. [vimeo 114949808 w=500 h=281] Dan Jurafsky - the Language of Food from Wit.ai on Vimeo.

• Book of the Week: Traction

  This week I decided to learn more about marketing by reading Traction, written by the founder of DuckDuckGo and another guy. One of difficult parts about marketing is knowing where to start. This book lists many possible channels and gives some background into each one. Since they cover so many channels, it is hard to go deep into each one, but I learned things that I did not know before. They put channels in relation to each other with the bull’s eye framework. For a company to be successful, you need to develop both your product and distribution channels at the same time. 19 Traction Channels

• Book of the Week: Lean In

  This week I read Lean In. There need to be more women leaders, because women are awesome and the man is keeping them from being awesome.

• Book of the Week: Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track

  Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track is a collection of letters of Richard P. Feynman’s correspondence with his family, friends, fans and colleagues. They are organized in chronological order from his first marriage, the atomic bomb, the Nobel Prize, the Challenger investigation, cancer to his death. The letters give a glimpse into the personal side of Feynman, especially the letters between him and his first wife. I read this book, because Elaine sent me this post about What Problems to Solve concerning a letter from his former student. There’s a TED talk I like by Leonard Susskind about his friend Richard Feynman, but I could not find a letter between the two in the book. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Waurx8e-1o&w;=560&h;=315]

• Book of the Week: The Richest Man in Babylon

  Either Rich Dad, Poor Dad plagiarized from 5,000 year old documents or that the way to get rich is as old as money. The Richest Man in Babylon is a collection of stories that give lessons on building wealth from richest man in Babylon. These principles are still applicable today. It’s not rocket science, yet lots of people are poor, because they don’t save and invest. 7 Remedies for a Lean Purse

• Book of the Week: Essentialism

  Essentialism is about doing less, but better. The book talks about why less is better, the differences between essentialist and non-essentialist and how to achieve essentialism. In order to do less, better, you need to be able to know how to say no. This goes back to saying no (Saying No, Saying No, Part II). Being able to say no is a very important skill to have. Success Leading to Failure

• Book of the Week: The Bogleheads' Guide to Retirement Planning

  This week’s book is The Bogleheads’ Guide to Retirement Planning. I wanted to read something to help me retire. I found out about Bogleheads through the personal finance subreddit. I didn’t find the book that useful. For people getting into retirement planning, it is an okay introduction. I found it easier to read stuff online and read finance books like The Intelligent Investor and Unconventional Success. I’m more concerned with investing than retirement even thought I’m investing for retirement. The goal of investing for retirement is to avoid taxes (money to government) and expenses (money to brokers/managers). The earlier you start investing, the better. IRAs and 401ks have tax benefits. Tax benefits are good. What’s a Boglehead? The founder of the investment management company Vanguard is John C. Bogle. Bogleheads are his cult followers. Putting Money Toward Retirement

• Book of the Week: The Hard Things About Hard Things

  Ben Horowitz is half of the VC firm, Andressen Horowitz. He was previously the CEO of Opsware (formerly Loudcloud) and worked with Marc Andressen, the founder of Netscape. This is a book written by a CEO for other CEOs. Ben has a popular blog, so you may recognize some things, but he goes into more of the backstory behind those ideas. The trend is to turn blogs into books. This is not a business book, because there are no formulas to being a CEO. Being a CEO is hard. The initial phases are easy when you’re building things. Things get hard when you hit the market and things don’t go the way you expected. This isn’t a book that you can summarize easily since there are so many hard things. If you want a taste, you can watch an interview Ben gave at the Stanford about nailing the hard things. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2e3RqL4VWs&w;=560&h;=315] Transparency

• 2013 Best Books Read

  Here are my picks for the best books I read in 2013. How Innovations are Adapted

• 2014 Best Books Read

  This post is for the people who ask for me things to read. Industries These are books that talk about an industry that is ubiquitous, but few people really know about.

• Book of the Week: Rich Dad, Poor Dad

  I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki, because I grew up without the benefit of having two dads. In the future more people will grow up with two dads. The poor dad was educated by school while the rich dad was educated by life. Robert takes advice from his rich dad, but is constantly reminded of how everyone else thinks by his poor dad. One of the stupidest things you can do is spending your time getting good grades in school to get a well paying, stable job. Doing so will only guarantee you’ll be poor for the rest of your life. The books explains why people who do everything they are told while growing up end up poor and educated. The book is divided into six lessons. Lesson #1 The Rich Don’t Work for Money