Week 40
1 min read

Week 40

Hi Readers,

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Great - onto this week's hot takes now.

🐬 Start-ups

How to pick markets by Erik Torenberg covers and contrasts Thiel's and Rabois' approach.

Engineer turned sales person is the secret weapon says Bradford Cross. I've always loved an honest and transparent approach to sales. The biggest surprise for engineers going into sales is usually the importance of problem solving - sales isn't about a flashy pitch, clothing or big nights out (although that's definitely a part of it in some industries). It's about building trust.

How to think about deep tech. Is a comprehensive but short guide by Nicolas Colin. This summarized a couple of lessons that have been slowly emerging for me from different conversations. An interesting point is that most start-ups shouldn't be doing R&D. But from what we have learned about the efficiency of science, the best place to do R&D isn't universities or start-ups, it's big companies.

📈 Investing

Justin Kan's secrets of Angel investing. I'm forming a whole sequence of thoughts around venture investing and different forms of it. The short version is quite pessimistic. Access to reasonably valued deals is limited for all but 1) the best Angel's 2) the best VC funds 3) the best syndicates. Syndicates probably offer the best way to invest in venture right now to someone who isn't uber-rich/uber-connected.

💸 Crypto

Good overview of Cosmos, as an alternative to Ethereum by Preethi Kasireddy.