To learn anything:<ul><li>Step 1: Identify a topic</li><li>Step 2: Try to explain it to a 5-year-old</li><li>Step 3: Study to fill in knowledge gaps</li><li>Step 4: Organize, convey, and review.</li></ul>True genius is the ability to simplify, not complicate.

The Feynman Technique

The goal is to minimize the number of regrets in life.When faced with a difficult decision:<ol><li>Project into the future.</li><li>Look back on the decision.</li><li>Ask "Will I regret not doing this?"</li><li>Act accordingly.</li></ol>

The Regret Minimization Framework

Learn the difference between urgent and important.Place tasks on a 2x2 matrix:<ul><li>Important & Urgent</li><li>Important & Not Urgent</li><li>Not Important & Urgent</li><li>Not Important & Not Urgent.</li></ul>Prioritize, delegate, or delete accordingly.

The Eisenhower Decision Matrix

These are:<ul><li>Financial (money)</li><li>Social (relationships)</li><li>Physical (health)</li><li>Mental (health, knowledge, faith)</li><li>Time (freedom).</li></ul>Money is NOT the only type of wealth. The pursuit of financial wealth can rob you of the others.

The 5 Types of Wealth

<ul><li>Black Lines = Paths Closed</li><li>Green Lines = Paths Open</li></ul>Stop focusing on the black lines behind you. Start focusing on all of the green lines before you. It is a future with immense opportunity.

Green Lines vs. Black Lines

Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.When you establish fixed hours, you find unproductive ways to fill them. Work more, get less done.If your goal is to do inspired, creative work, work like a lion instead: Sprint. Eat. Rest. Repeat.

Parkinson’s Law

When faced with chaos, ask yourself whether you're a local or a tourist.Tourists flee bad weather. Locals are aware of the season's change.Play games where you're a local. Never be a "Stubborn Local”—ignoring evidence that something has fundamentally changed.

Local vs. Tourist

Extraordinary achievements are often just the result of a large volume of tiny actions.Small things become big things.

Compounding

Imagine a rock is thrown into a lake. The splash is the first-order effect—the ripples are the second-order effect.The world is filled with first-order thinkers. Dig deeper—ask "and then what?” Second-order thinkers will always be in short supply.

Second-Order Thinking

You have to put in more effort to make something appear effortless.Effortless, elegant performances are simply the result of a large volume of consistent, effortful practice. Simple is not simple.

The Paradox of Effort

The energy required to refute bullshit is much larger than the energy required to produce it.This is why BS spreads so easily—especially on social media. It's also why we need to make a deliberate effort to fight back against it.

BS Asymmetry Principle

Most of us need fewer friends and more intellectual sparring partners.<ul><li>Friends are easy to come by.</li><li>Intellectual sparring partners are harder to find. They will call you on your BS, question your assumptions, and push you to think deeply.</li></ul>

Intellectual Sparring Partners

<ul><li>Occam's Razor: The simplest explanation is often the best one.</li><li>Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.</li><li>Hitchens' Razor: Anything asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.</li></ul>

The Big 3 Razors

Much of what we call "luck" is the macro result of 1,000s of micro-actions.<ul><li>Your habits put you in a position where luck is more likely to strike.</li><li>If you want to create more luck, increase your luck surface area.</li><li>Open up the aperture to let more luck in.</li></ul>

Luck Surface Area

When faced with two options, choose the one that’s more difficult in the short term. Naval calls this making "uphill decisions”.It requires a forced override of your pain avoidance instinct. It's worth it—short-term pain creates compounding long-term gain.

Uphill Decisions

<ul><li>The British offered bounties for cobra heads—so locals bred cobras to turn in their heads.</li><li>A policy designed to reduce the cobra population had the opposite effect.</li></ul>Lesson: When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

The Cobra Effect

Tiny deviations are amplified by distance and time.A 1-degree error in heading will cause a plane to miss its target by 1 mile for every 60 miles flown.Small miss now = large miss later. Always make real-time course corrections and adjustments.

The 1-in-60 Rule

Observe the weekend projects of the smartest people in your circles. Odds are those will become a key part of our future.Invest accordingly.

The Weekend Test

<ul><li>Old Way: Learn to Play.</li><li>New Way: Play to Learn.</li></ul>We are living in an unprecedented era—historical boundaries are being broken, enabling anyone to participate.If you're trying to learn anything new, insert yourself into the game. It's the only way.

Play to Learn

Skin in the Game means that the key principals participate in both the upside and downside associated with any decisions.<ul><li>Always look for its presence in any new situation.</li><li>Avoid games where those making the rules don't have any skin in the game.</li></ul>

Skin in the Game

Jerry Seinfeld hangs a calendar on the wall and uses a red marker to put an X over every day that he completes his daily writing.It's not about quality, it's about consistency. If you want to improve at anything:<ul><li>30 days</li><li>30 min per day</li></ul>Build the habit.

30-for-30 Plan

Asking great questions uncovers the truth—bias for action builds upon it.The four quadrants:<ul><li>Q1: World-changers (rare!)</li><li>Q2: Grinders/hustlers</li><li>Q3: Philosophers/thinkers</li><li>Q4: Dead zone</li></ul>Invest behind Q1s, hire more Q2s, spend time with Q3s, and avoid Q4s.

Question-Action Matrix

Your Zone of Genius is where your interests, passions, and skills align.<ul><li>Operating in your Zone of Genius means playing games you are uniquely well-suited to win.</li><li>Once you identify it, you can stop playing "their" games and start playing "yours".</li></ul>

Zone of Genius

philosophy

Philosophy

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

problemsolving

Problem Solving

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

Frameworks for thinking

<ul><li>Your second brain is a trusted place outside your head to preserve and protect your most valuable knowledge.</li><li>Digital notes apps are the centrepiece of your Second Brain.</li><li>You don't choose the right app - a notes app chooses you.</li><li>Try to force yourself to use a piece of software that isn't compatible with your temperament, style, and personality.</li></ul>

Your Second Brain

There are four common styles of notetaking:
<ul>
<li>The Architect: Building Systems. Architects want to fit all their information into an all-encompassing "ultimate system" with a clear hierarchy.</li>
<li>The Gardener: Cultivating. Think in a bottom-up way, cultivating many kinds of ideas and possibilities at the same time.</li>
<li>The Librarian: Researching for Projects. Librarians value books and ideas for their own sake but also seeking to organize information for specific purposes.</li>
<li>The Student: Acquiring Knowledge. The Student is the most common kind of notetaker.</li>
</ul>

The Four Notetaking Styles

<ul><li>Which of the above descriptions most resonated with your approach to taking notes? Which one felt the most natural and familiar</li><li>As your confidence builds you can always learn to master the other styles as well.</li><li>Choose a notes app that aligns with how your brain works.</li></ul>

Your Own Notetaking Style

writing

Reading & Writing

The 4 Notetaking Styles: How to Choose a Digital Notes App as Your Second Brain - Forte Labs

She is one of the most influential philosophers in Athens, and was forced to leave her home in Miletus, now in modern-day Turkey, and found refuge in Athens.Opened a salon where thinkers of the day gathered to discuss philosophy and current events and taught rhetoric to young girls in Athens.

Aspasia: The Little-Known Female Philosopher

<ul>
<li>Turning challenges into opportunities: She seized the freedom to design her life outside of traditional expectations, hosting her private salons and building her very own school for young girls.</li>
<li>Delighting in debate: She embraced debate as a powerful learning tool.</li>
<li>Establishing a knowledge-sharing hub: Her logic, debating skills, conversation, and eloquent speech attracted not only fellow philosophers but also artists and scientists, and her followers and supporters held significant positions of power in Athens.</li>
</ul>

Aspasia’s Thinking Strategies

<ul><li>Embrace challenges and defy societal expectations</li><li>Develop your power of persuasion</li><li>Create or join a learning community</li><li>Use your outsider status to defy expectations about what women can accomplish</li><li>Be open-minded to new ideas and fresh perspectives</li></ul>

How To Think Like Aspasia

Aspasia, a little-known female philosopher with the gift of persuasion, is rarely mentioned in history books. However, she was one of the most influential philosophical figures in Athens.

motivationandinspiration

Motivation & Inspiration

Aspasia: the power of debate and collective learning

Simone de Beauvoir, born in 1908, was an influential writer, feminist, social theorist and philosopher. She is known for her 1949 book, The Second Sex, which changed the way society at large thinks about the role of women. Beauvoir authored the Manifesto of the 343, which set the stage for legalising birth control and abortion in France. Beauvoir was also deeply engaged in politics and one of the original editors of the left-wing French publication Les Temps Modernes.

Simone de Beauvoir

<ul><li>Challenging the status quo. Beauvoir challenged societal expectations of women. As a secondary school teacher, she was fired from multiple jobs for teaching about feminism, morally corrupting the youth.</li><li>Embracing ambiguity. Beauvoir published the book Ethics of Ambiguity. Instead of focusing on one perspective, she recognised that social problems result from systemic and individual issues.</li><li>Celebrating intellectualism. Beauvoir embraced the intellectual quest of deriving knowledge from reason.</li></ul>

Simone de Beauvoir’s thinking strategies

<ul>
<li>What are topics you are passionate about? What areas would you like to contribute to changing minds and fostering innovation?</li>
<li>Write down public engagement skills you are comfortable with, such as writing, speaking, teaching, organising, and consider how you can use them to support causes.</li>
<li>Get more comfortable with ambiguity. Beauvoir wrote about ethics in ambiguous situations and balanced arguments in her work. </li>
<li>Practice inclusive thinking. Beauvoir always included the voices of people who were often excluded from intellectual conversations.</li>
</ul>

How to think like Simone de Beauvoir

Simone de Beauvoir was an influential writer, feminist, social theorist, and philosopher. She is best known for her book "The Second Sex" which upended traditional notions of the role of women in society.

education

Learning & Education

Simone de Beauvoir: the power of intellectual advocacy

A mathematician is always asking, “What assumptions are you making? And are they justified?”

Math is a science that helps us solve common problems and enable us to be right about our decisions. Math is mostly just common sense. We intuitively use logic and reason to solve "math" problems.  However, we often fail at this logic - for example, in survivorship bias. When analysing data, survivorship bias only focuses on the people or things that succeeded while ignoring the one’s that failed.

Math is the study of avoiding errors

We use probability to assess how risky something is, such as an investment or an action we want to take. But if we just use probability to assess risk, we fail to take into account how bad the potential negative outcomes will be if they do occur. For example, would you rather get<ol><li>$50,000</li><li>or have a 50/50 chance of losing $100,000 or getting $200,000?</li></ol>The expected value is the same, but the negative results in the second scenario would be really bad. The risk is much higher.

We confuse probability with risk

Headlines like “New study shows milk is related to Alzheimer’s.” “This study reveals how much you really do at work.” is problematic for these reasons:<ul><li>Sometimes insignificant results can pass statistical tests. </li><li>Unsuccessful studies are rarely published. E.g. 20 studies test chocolate for causing constipation. If 19 fail and only the one that finds a correlation is published, it can change our perception.</li><li>Researchers fake results. If they only need one extra percentage point to comply with scientific standards, they may tweak the data because they believe what they found is true.</li></ul>

Take the findings of scientific research with a grain of salt

Dividing one number by another is mere computation. Figuring out what to divide is mathematics.

<ul><li>Small datasets have a lot more noise in them. When looking at conclusions based on data sets, see how much noise to signal it contains.</li><li>Percentages are good for positive quantities but should be avoided for negative numbers.</li><li>Statistical observations. People are quick to see patterns that don't exist.</li><li>Correlation is not transitive. A father is related by blood to his son, the son is related by blood to the mother, but the mother and father are not related by blood.</li><li>Uncorrelated does not imply unrelated.</li></ul>

Other mathematical traps

People often assume that the rate of change of a quantity will remain the same over time. If obesity increased 1% last year, they assume the same will happen in the following years. One research paper concluded that 100% of Americans will be obese by 2048, then applied false linearity to the same data and concluded that only 80% of black men will be obese at that time.

False linearity

How not to be deceived by mathematical traps.

“Witty, compelling, and just plain fun to read . . ." —Evelyn Lamb, Scientific American The Freakonomics of math—a math-world superstar unveils the hidden beauty and logic of the world and puts its power in our hands The math we learn in school can seem like a dull set of rules, laid down by the ancients and not to be questioned. In How Not to Be Wrong, Jordan Ellenberg shows us how terribly limiting this view is: Math isn’t confined to abstract incidents that never occur in real life, but rather touches everything we do—the whole world is shot through with it. Math allows us to see the hidden structures underneath the messy and chaotic surface of our world. It’s a science of not being wrong, hammered out by centuries of hard work and argument. Armed with the tools of mathematics, we can see through to the true meaning of information we take for granted: How early should you get to the airport? What does “public opinion” really represent? Why do tall parents have shorter children? Who really won Florida in 2000? And how likely are you, really, to develop cancer? How Not to Be Wrong presents the surprising revelations behind all of these questions and many more, using the mathematician’s method of analyzing life and exposing the hard-won insights of the academic community to the layman—minus the jargon. Ellenberg chases mathematical threads through a vast range of time and space, from the everyday to the cosmic, encountering, among other things, baseball, Reaganomics, daring lottery schemes, Voltaire, the replicability crisis in psychology, Italian Renaissance painting, artificial languages, the development of non-Euclidean geometry, the coming obesity apocalypse, Antonin Scalia’s views on crime and punishment, the psychology of slime molds, what Facebook can and can’t figure out about you, and the existence of God. Ellenberg pulls from history as well as from the latest theoretical developments to provide those not trained in math with the knowledge they need. Math, as Ellenberg says, is “an atomic-powered prosthesis that you attach to your common sense, vastly multiplying its reach and strength.” With the tools of mathematics in hand, you can understand the world in a deeper, more meaningful way. How Not to Be Wrong will show you how.

books

Books

“Witty, compelling, and just plain fun to read . . ." —Evelyn Lamb, Scientific American The Freakonomics of math—a math-world superstar unveils the hidden beauty and logic of the world and puts its power in our hands The math we learn in school can seem like a dull set of rules, laid down by the ancients and not to be questioned. In How Not to Be Wrong, Jordan Ellenberg shows us how terribly limiting this view is: Math isn’t confined to abstract incidents that never occur in real life, but rather touches everything we do—the whole world is shot through with it. Math allows us to see the hidden structures underneath the messy and chaotic surface of our world. It’s a science of not being wrong, hammered out by centuries of hard work and argument. Armed with the tools of mathematics, we can see through to the true meaning of information we take for granted: How early should you get to the airport? What does “public opinion” really represent? Why do tall parents have shorter children? Who really won Florida in 2000? And how likely are you, really, to develop cancer? How Not to Be Wrong presents the surprising revelations behind all of these questions and many more, using the mathematician’s method of analyzing life and exposing the hard-won insights of the academic community to the layman—minus the jargon. Ellenberg chases mathematical threads through a vast range of time and space, from the everyday to the cosmic, encountering, among other things, baseball, Reaganomics, daring lottery schemes, Voltaire, the replicability crisis in psychology, Italian Renaissance painting, artificial languages, the development of non-Euclidean geometry, the coming obesity apocalypse, Antonin Scalia’s views on crime and punishment, the psychology of slime molds, what Facebook can and can’t figure out about you, and the existence of God. Ellenberg pulls from history as well as from the latest theoretical developments to provide those not trained in math with the knowledge they need. Math, as Ellenberg says, is “an atomic-powered prosthesis that you attach to your common sense, vastly multiplying its reach and strength.” With the tools of mathematics in hand, you can understand the world in a deeper, more meaningful way. How Not to Be Wrong will show you how.

Jordan Ellenberg

How Not to Be Wrong

You need the job to get some experience, but you need some experience to get the job. It’s the classic catch-22 that many job seekers face when starting out in their careers.
However, when you’re a seasoned professional with years of work under your belt, this is probably something you had hoped to leave in the past. But, when making a career shift, it’s a hurdle that you will need to overcome, once more.

Back To The Same Situation

The best way to do this is to break your long-term goals into smaller steps, and use step one as the target for your next career move, considering how you can be ambitious without being naive. 
Think about what the next step should be toward your ultimate career goal, and don’t shoot straight for the CEO job. Breaking your goals down into steps like this keeps them manageable, and stops you from becoming overwhelmed.

Setting Realistic Goals

When you’re changing careers, and you don’t have any relevant experience in your new field, you have to accept that you’ll need to take a step back for a while. This could mean taking a more junior role than your current position and perhaps accepting a pay cut.
However, don’t let this step back dishearten you. You can quickly begin to work your way back up the ladder, and ultimately, you’ll be working in the role or industry that makes you happy, so it’s worth the short-term sacrifice.

Taking A Step Back

Another way to bolster your résumé when you don’t have any experience in your chosen field is to upskill yourself in relevant areas. Nowadays, there are several ways you can do this so you can find the learning style that best fits your lifestyle.
You could go to college to study, attending evening classes to fit around your current work schedule. Alternatively, you could complete an online course from the comfort of your own home and in your own time. There are thousands of low-cost (and even free) courses available online.

Developing New Skills

Volunteering can help you gain some valuable experience for your résumé, whilst also a nice way to give back. Although it may be unpaid, you’ll profit from the skills and experience further down the line.Plus, it can be much easier to secure than a full- or part-time role, and again, it can fit nicely around your current job. Volunteering also shows a commitment and proactive decision-making, which always look great to an employer.

Do Some Volunteering Work

The key to “adjusting” your résumé is to focus on your qualities that are relevant to the new profession, and cut back on the parts that are geared toward your old profession (no matter how impressive they may be).
It’s a good idea to carefully read through posted job descriptions for wording or phrases to adopt as well as any skills and qualifications that match the recent courses you’ve taken and your relevant volunteering experiences. Be sure to highlight those skills and attributes on your résumé by giving them prominent placement at the top, in your profile and skills section.

Adjust Your Resume

Try to be patient, and remember that when you’re starting a race well behind the competition, you simply need to put in a lot of effort to catch up and then get ahead. So, be proactive, build relationships with recruiters, and try to get as many early job applications as possible.Though it may take some time, all you need is one interview to get a foot in the door; then make a good impression, and you’ll land the job that will set you on your way in your new industry.

Stay Persistent

Even if you feel under-prepared for a job switch doesn’t mean that you’re out of the running.


career

Career

How to land a job when you have no experience in the field

Fundraising is both a science and an art. The method that a startup uses to raise money helps determine its financial situation and how much help and advice the startup receives along the way.Startups may initially use personal or family funds to start the business, but crowdfunding has also grown in popularity. Still, venture capital funding is the dominant source and is at an all-time high in recent years; CB insights reports that U.S.-based venture capital investments totaled $130 billion in 2020.

Fundraising sources

CVCs typically invest with a strategic goal in mind. They want to tap into innovation across industries related to their current business and roadmap in addition to achieving a positive financial return. Furthermore, CVCs aim to build new revenue streams through strategic collaborations with portfolio companies. Looking at it from the startup’s perspective, the company gets not only funding, but they benefit from the advice and infrastructure of a corporation. This may help the startup learn how to expand their business, enter international markets, qualify for new products and manufacture at scale.

Why corporate venture capital is popular

Corporate venture capital offers a successful model that benefits both startups and corporate investors. 

moneyandinvestments

Money & Investments

startup

Startups

Why Raising Corporate Venture Capital Benefits Startups

Ipos are regulated by the SEC and have a set of legal requirements. Icos are currently unregulated and more of a "wild West" practice. Some argue that they have turned into a "perverse and unsustainable Keynesian beauty contest. Supporters are optimistic and claim that it’s a new form of venture capital. The main difference is regulation.

ICO vs IPO: The wild west of investment

You can’t understand ICOs without understanding the underlying digital asset sold in an ICO. If you want to understand why crypto is getting the spotlight, you have to understand the behind-the-scenes catalysts driving the market. Right now, that catalyst is the “token sale” or “Initial Coin Offering (ICO)” phenomenon.

Necessary background knowledge

Bitcoin is a decentralized Digital currency that uses a Peer-To-Peer technology. There isn’t a central authority issuing new money or tracking transactions. These operations are managed collectively by the network.

Bitcoin

A Blockchain is collectively maintained by miners who compete to validate Bitcoin transactions in each block by solving the complex Algorithmic problem associated with the block. The incentive for them to use their computing power to verify transactions is that they are rewarded with Bitcoin if they solve the problem and validate a Bitcoin block. The power of such a decentralized network is that economic value and Governance are distributed among the network’s Stakeholders (I.E. Miners and consumers) thanks to this setup, anyone can own and transfer assets Digitally without ..

Blockchain

A protocol is the special set of rules that nodes in a network use when they transmit information. It guarantees that the data packets will be delivered and that they will be delivered in the same order in which they were sent. Another example of a protocol is Internet protocol (IP), which specifies the format of the data packets on the Internet and the addressing scheme. When discussing Blockchains,

Protocol layer

The financial incentive for miners comes from the native token built on top of the Bitcoin Blockchain — Bitcoin. Miners who use their computing power to validate transactions are rewarded with a certain amount of coin. The main takeaway here is that every token is based on some underlying Blockchain — whether it’s Bitcoin’s Blockchain, Ethereum’s Blockchain, or some other Forked/New Blockchain. The Blockchain provides a backbone for asset manipulation that is immutable, decentralized, and impossible to counterfeit.

Tokens

For a typical Bitcoin transfer, the script will define what the spender must provide: <ul><li>a public key that, when hashed, matches the destination address included in the script </li><li>a signature to show evidence of the private key corresponding to the public key just provided </li></ul>

The application layer

Many of us in the Crypto world were under the impression that developers would immediately hop on the bandwagon and use Bitcoin’s Scripting language. But fast forward eight years (Bitcoin was released in 2009), and Bitcoin has yet to become more than a store of value and a speculative investment. Sadly, almost no one I know uses Blockchain-Based applications in their day to day.

But Where Are The Apps?

A Scripting language is a programming language where you can write code to perform some actions. The Javascript on top reads pretty much like English. Bitcoin’s Scripting language, on the other hand, looks like machine code. Developers are used to writing in expressive languages like Javascript,

1. Lack of developer friendliness and tooling

A network effect is when a product or service increases in value as more people use it. For every new friend that joins, the value of the product goes up because you can now pay and/or receive payment from this friend. Building up this network is one of the hardest parts of building a successful product, classically known as the 'Chicken and Egg'Problem. The Blockchain provides the technological underpinnings to create decentralized applications,

2. Building a decentralized application with strong network effects isn’t easy

The 10X rule is important to think about when considering how to get users to substitute existing solutions with the new decentralized ones. As of now, it’s unclear what dimension these 10X advantages come from, so far as users go. I foresee a future where applications are 10X more secure, 10X cheaper, 10X more efficient, or 10X more on some dimension than the current ones. The point is that these benefits have not been proven yet, so there 's

3. Decentralization alone doesn’t provide a 10x improvement

<ul><li>Ethereum is a Cryptocurrency launched in 2015 and built from the ground up using its own Blockchain technology. </li><li>It was designed to be a more generalized protocol than Bitcoin’s Blockchain. </li><li>The goal of Ethereum is to create an alternative protocol for building decentralized applications. </li><li>The Ethereum Blockchain can be filled with a wider variety of event information coming from any sort of computer program.</li></ul>

The rise of decentralized applications… maybe.

Externally owned accounts and contracts accounts have an ether balance. Contract accounts have some piece of code associated with them, while externally owned accounts do not. Essentially, a message is like a transaction, except it’s produced by a contract account rather than an external account. When a transaction is sent to a contract account, the code associated with the account is executed by the “Ethereum virtual machine (Evm)” on each Node.

Ethereum basics

So essentially, there’s two types of protocols: <ul><li>Ones which have a intrinsic token associated with it that help create economic incentives that drive a network </li><li>Ones which don’t have a token that drives financial incentives and are simply used as a communication protocol between nodes </li></ul>

Protocols

What’s more, these non-intrinsic tokens can exist as: <ul><li>Standalone tokens built on Ethereum </li><li>Be associated with any new underlying crypto-token-protocol built on Ethereum </li><li>Be associated with any new underlying crypto-protocol built on Ethereum </li></ul>

Non-Intrinsic Tokens

A token sale allows developers to easily release Tradable tokens to raise funds for building a protocol and/or application. Early Adopters who believe in the protocol or application have an incentive to buy the token because there is potential for that token to be worth more in the future. As the protocol gains adoption, it increases the value of the tokens, which draws more attention from more investors, application builders and users. Once the protocols begin to take shape and standardize, we’ll likely see a whole host of De-

Protocols, tokens, token sales, now what?

Besides these issues, there are still lots of unanswered questions that need to be figured out before token sales become a viable form of funding: <ul><li>What is the right design and structure for a token sale? </li><li>In what cases does it make sense to structure tokens as investment security? How should such token sales be regulated? </li><li>What criteria should an individual investor use to evaluate token sales? </li><li>How is an investor guaranteed that the sale process is being managed in a safe and legal manner? </li></ul>

It’s not a happy ending yet

…and multi-million dollar token sales are commonplace, as are front-page headlines from traditional news outlets discussing Ethereum, Bitcoin, ICOs, tokens, hard forks, and other technical topics…

Bitcoin, Ethereum, Blockchain, Tokens, ICOs: Why should anyone care?

Hiring means we failed to execute and need help. 
First, let me quell a misconception. Hiring is not a consequence of success. Revenue and customers are. Hiring is a consequence of our failure to create enough leverage (see <a href="https://medium.com/@henrysward/eshares-101-e96d792bdc69#.ww37jmxxz">eShares 101</a>) to grow on our own. It means we need outside help. The perfect business is a computer plugged into the internet. Anything more is just overhead.

Hiring Principles

We rationalize this behavior with “lies we tell ourselves.” Here are a few lies people use to keep an ineffective employee: <ul><li>He is trying really hard. </li><li>She deserves another chance. </li><li>People really like her. </li><li>I feel bad for him. </li><li>He’s good at other things. </li><li>He has stuff going on in his personal life </li><li>She is in the wrong role. </li></ul>

Lies We Tell Ourselves

Much like startup performance follows a power law, so do startup employees. The most effective employees create 20x more leverage than an average employee. This is not true in an efficiency company — the best employees might work 2x faster than their peers. But in a high-leverage startup like ours, the effectiveness gap between employees can be multiple orders of magnitude.

Employee effectiveness is a power law

Most companies hire by consensus and committee. In a committee of N, each positive vote is worth 1/N of a hiring decision. However, one negative vote will reject a candidate. No matter how a strong a voter’s conviction, their vote will never count more than 1/N. Conversely, the slightest negative view will kill a hire. Consensus optimizes for employees with the fewest objections (least weaknesses). It works well to reduce False Positives but creates many False Negatives.**

Hire for Strength vs Lack of Weakness

When eShares was a company of one, me, our culture was “my culture”. My culture was quickly replaced by the culture of the first ten employees. I couldn’t stop it if I tried — I was outnumbered 10 to 1. Today, the 37 of you that joined us since have vastly outnumbered the first ten. And thank goodness! Our culture today is far better than it was when we were ten and infinitely better than when it was just me.

Culture-contributors are better than culture-fitters

It is important to note that Trajectory and Experience are not opposites. Trajectory is the first (and second) derivative of Experience. Most candidates have both and both are important. But Trajectory is far more valuable. Our job is not to hire for Experience. That’s what everyone else does. Our job is to hire people whose Trajectory will explode when they join eShares, pulling us along with them.

Hire for Trajectory vs Experience

The best predictor of a successful new hire at eShares is if they like to get their hands dirty. Whether it is writing code, building spreadsheets, calling customers, or stocking the fridge. This is true at every level. Our senior managers are hands-on, care about details, and are not afraid to roll up their sleeves. They don’t last long otherwise.

Hire Doers vs Tellers

This doesn’t mean expertise isn’t important. We are a company of specialists, not generalists. Each of us is an expert, or becoming an expert, in our domain. You cannot be successful at eShares without being an expert at something.

Hire Learners vs Experts

In our short history, our best hires were very Different from the team that hired them. They don’t seem Different now because they expanded our culture. They changed what Different looked like.There is a deep and natural human bias to hire people “like us.” Fight this bias. Hiring Similar means we value repeatability and efficiency over creativity and leverage.

Hire Different vs Similar

For most of this talk, I have talked about signals to hire. I’ll conclude with a signal to not hire. Confidence and ego are opposites. Modesty and humility are traits of the strong. Ego and arrogance is a disease of the weak and insecure. The truly confident don’t need people to know they are great. They are happy to know it themselves. And the truly Great use their greatness to make those around them greater.

Always pass on ego

Simple tips to determine if your candidates have the behavioural traits and skills needed for the role

communication

Communication

business

Business

Hiring the Best in Class

Below is an excerpt from a talk I gave at the eShares Town Hall in November 2015. I hope it is helpful to other CEOs struggling with hiring. Hi everyone. As you know, I have opened 27 new headcount…

Frameworks for thinking

The 4 Notetaking Styles: How to Choose a Digital Notes App as Your Second Brain - Forte Labs

Aspasia: the power of debate and collective learning

Simone de Beauvoir: the power of intellectual advocacy

How Not to Be Wrong

Todd Hood