Founder/Engineer/Product Manager/Athlete
Drew Jankowski
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Gmorning, Gnight!: Little Pep Talks for Me & You by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jonny Sun

2/10/2019

 
After a little bit of a hiatus, I'm back with a blog extravaganza! This delightful little book was another quick and easy airplane read. It brought a smile to my face page after page. It's a nice one to have by your bedside or on your coffee table. I love Lin-Manuel, and when I saw he published a book, I was all in!

Key Takeaways
  • You can do it!
  • You're enough.
  • You are loved.
  • Make each day your masterpiece.

Memorable Quotes
  • “Gmorning! You're gonna make mistakes. You're gonna fail. You're gonna get back up. You're gonna break hearts. You're gonna change minds. You're gonna make noise. You're gonna make music. You're gonna be late, let's GO.
  • Gnight! You're gonna fall down. You're gonna be tested. You're gonna learn about yourself. You're gonna get brave. You're gonna take stands. You're gonna make waves. You're gonna make history. You're gonna need rest, REST UP.”
  • “Gmorning. YOU ARE SO LOVED AND WE LIKE HAVING YOU AROUND. *ties one end of this sentence to your heart, the other end to everyone who loves you, even the ones you haven’t heard from for a while* *checks knots* THERE. STAY PUT, YOU.
  • Gnight. YOU ARE SO LOVED AND WE LIKE HAVING YOU AROUND. *ties one end of this sentence to your heart, the other end to everyone who loves you in this life, even if clouds obscure your view* *checks knots* THERE. STAY PUT, YOU. TUG IF YOU NEED ANYTHING.”
  • Gmorning. Allow for the possibility that the best of you is still inside you, waiting to emerge. Prepare the way, bit by bit.
  • Good morning. Your very presence is intoxicating. Good night. Your very absence is sobering.
  • Good Morning Don't wait on anyone to make your favorite thing Make your own favorite thing Go.

Rating: 9/10
This delightful little book is full of surprises. It's one worth keeping around and re-reading every now and then, if only for the few smiles it will bring to your face. 

Measure What Matters by John Doerr

12/28/2018

 
We're implementing OKR's at CREXi (my company), so I figured I should read the bible on the subject to get familiar. I was not disappointed. Measure What Matters is part how-to guide, part case study, and part culture guide. It lays out a goal setting framework for companies and shows how it's used at companies like Google. It also explores how this framework affects culture at companies like Intel. Anyone in a leadership position at a company should read this one.

Key Takeaways
  • OKR's (Objectives and Key Results) are a simple framework for goal setting at a company.
  • Objectives are the "what," the direction we want to go.
  • Key Results are the "how," the specific and measurable goals we need to hit to say we reached the Objective.
  • Companies should set 3-5 OKR's that are then trickled down through departments.
  • Individual Contributors in departments should construct OKR's that then trickle up.
  • OKR's should be transparent across the entire organization.
  • The expected achievement of "Committed" OKRs is 100%.
  • The expected achievement of "Stretch" OKRs is 70%. Higher means you didn't reach enough with your goal setting.

Memorable Quotes
  • My first PowerPoint slide defined OKRs: “A management methodology that helps to ensure that the company focuses efforts on the same important issues throughout the organization.
  • Short for Objectives and Key Results. It is a collaborative goal-setting protocol for companies, teams, and individuals. Now, OKRs are not a silver bullet. They cannot substitute for sound judgment, strong leadership, or a creative workplace culture. But if those fundamentals are in place, OKRs can guide you to the mountaintop.
  • We must realize—and act on the realization—that if we try to focus on everything, we focus on nothing.
  • Leaders must get across the why as well as the what. Their people need more than milestones for motivation. They are thirsting for meaning, to understand how their goals relate to the mission.
  • "Bad companies,” Andy wrote, “are destroyed by crisis. Good companies survive them. Great companies are improved by them."
  • When people have conflicting priorities or unclear, meaningless, or arbitrarily shifting goals, they become frustrated, cynical, and demotivated.
  • An effective goal-setting system starts with disciplined thinking at the top, with leaders who invest the time and energy to choose what counts.
  • Alongside focus, commitment is a core element of our first superpower. In implementing OKRs, leaders must publicly commit to their objectives and stay steadfast.
  • KEY RESULTS benchmark and monitor HOW we get to the objective. Effective KRs are specific and time-bound, aggressive yet realistic. Most of all, they are measurable and verifiable. (As prize pupil Marissa Mayer would say, “It’s not a key result unless it has a number.”)
  • Contributors are most engaged when they can actually see how their work contributes to the company’s success. Quarter to quarter, day to day, they look for tangible measures of their achievement. Extrinsic rewards—the year-end bonus check--merely validate what they already know. OKRs speak to something more powerful, the intrinsic value of the work itself.
  • You know, in our business we have to set ourselves uncomfortably tough objectives, and then we have to meet them. And then after ten milliseconds of celebration we have to set ourselves another [set of] highly difficult-to-reach objectives and we have to meet them. And the reward of having met one of these challenging goals is that you get to play again.
  • It takes intellectual rigor to effect change; it requires very serious strategies, indeed. If the heart doesn’t find a perfect rhyme with the head, then your passion means nothing. The OKR framework cultivates the madness, the chemistry contained inside it.

Rating: 9/10
Any leader in a mission driven organization should read this book. Even if you don't take OKRs to your team, there are other goal-setting and cultural takeaways. If you're ambitious and diligent, there's no reason you can't apply OKRs to your own life! Happy goal hunting!

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo

12/28/2018

 
I read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up in hopes it might help me un-clutter my life. I first came across Kondo on Tim Ferriss's podcast with her. It definitely did the trick. Marie Kondo is a Tidying Up consultant in Japan, and she's put together a very simple system. I'm away from home right now, but I look forward to tackling my apartment when I get back! Kondo gives life to every object, and treats it with respect. The book is equal parts instruction manual and philosophical text. That fact is what makes it so fascinating.

Key Takeaways
  • It's simple, but hard work, to tidy up once and for all.
  • You need to tackle your tidying up all at once otherwise you will slide back into your old ways.
  • Keep like things together.
  • Keep only the things that give you joy.
  • When discarding, say thank you to that item for its service.

Memorable Quotes
  • The question of what you want to own is actually the question of how you want to live your life.
  • But when we really delve into the reasons for why we can’t let something go, there are only two: an attachment to the past or a fear for the future.
  • Keep only those things that speak to your heart. Then take the plunge and discard all the rest. By doing this, you can reset your life and embark on a new lifestyle.
  • The space in which we live should be for the person we are becoming now, not for the person we were in the past.
  • The best way to choose what to keep and what to throw away is to take each item in one’s hand and ask: “Does this spark joy?” If it does, keep it. If not, dispose of it. This is not only the simplest but also the most accurate yardstick by which to judge.
  • Imagine what it would be like to have a bookshelf filled only with books that you really love. Isn’t that image spellbinding? For someone who loves books, what greater happiness could there be?
  • No matter how wonderful things used to be, we cannot live in the past. The joy and excitement we feel here and now are more important.
  • Clutter is caused by a failure to return things to where they belong. Therefore, storage should reduce the effort needed to put things away, not the effort needed to get them out.
  • People cannot change their habits without first changing their way of thinking.
  • The true purpose of a present is to be received.
  • Visible mess helps distract us from the true source of the disorder.
  • We should be choosing what we want to keep, not what we want to get rid of.
  • The process of assessing how you feel about the things you own, identifying those that have fulfilled their purpose, expressing your gratitude, and bidding them farewell, is really about examining your inner self, a rite of passage to a new life.
  • When you come across something that you cannot part with, think carefully about its true purpose in your life. You’ll be surprised at how many of the things you possess have already fulfilled their role. By acknowledging their contribution and letting them go with gratitude, you will be able to truly put the things you own, and your life, in order. In the end, all that will remain are the things that you really treasure. To truly cherish the things that are important to you, you must first discard those that have outlived their purpose.

Rating: 8.5/10
This is a very easy read that can help you tidy up your space in a small period of time. In theory, it's not hard to put into practice, and it even points out the pitfalls to avoid in your tidying. In the end, you'll fill your life with only the most joyful objects. Your mind will also be free from the cruft of old and useless items.

The Putting Bible by Dave Pelz

12/28/2018

 
Dave Pelz has been a short game and putting guru for quite some time. His Putting Bible has all the technical knowledge you need (and more!) to be a great putter. It's heavy on the science and engineering of putting. It's filled with great concepts, drills, and routines to try. It breaks down putting in a very concrete way into individual skills. You can practice and master each of these skills independent from the others.

Key Takeaways
  • The simpler the stroke, the more consistent and repeatable the stroke.
  • The simplest stroke is one that uses a pure pendulum motion.
  • The lumpy donut around the hole, from 1'-8' bounces your ball all over the place. That's why even the best struck putt may not always go in.
  • Putting is a game of percentages.
  • Speed is four times more important than line.
  • The visible break of a putt is about 1/3 of the total effective break of a putt.

Rating: 8/10
If you're interested in expanding your technical understanding, this book is for you! If not, steer clear. There is more detail in here than I even considered. If you read this book, you will putt worse before you putt better, as it will take some time to ingrain the better habits. If you're already struggling on the greens, that will be a tough pill to swallow. In the long run, it'll be worth it though, so stick with it!

Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

12/28/2018

 
Thinking Fast and Slow is my favorite social psychology book. It's a great look at how our minds work (or don't work) in specific situations. It's a friendly reminder of how un-logical we are as humans. Daniel Kahneman does a great job of presenting his evidence and arguments. He also addresses the arguments of his opponents to better defend his logic.

Key Takeaways
  • Our brain has two parts, called "System 1" and "System 2" used for different types of thinking.
  • System 1 is the subconscious, intuitive, fast, and low energy thinking system. It is always at work.
  • System 2 is the conscious, logical, slow, and high energy thinking system. It only works when we're focused and have enough energy to engage it.
  • Our intuitions are often wrong about many things. In particular, math and statistics cause problems for System 1.
  • There are many biases that arise from System 1. Confirmation Bias may be one you've heard of.
  • Even understanding the effects of these biases does not make you immune to them.

Memorable Quotes
  • Nothing in life is as important as you think it is, while you are thinking about it.
  • Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on a secure foundation: our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance.
  • Intelligence is not only the ability to reason; it is also the ability to find relevant material in memory and to deploy attention when needed.
  • A general “law of least effort” applies to cognitive as well as physical exertion. The law asserts that if there are several ways of achieving the same goal, people will eventually gravitate to the least demanding course of action. In the economy of action, effort is a cost, and the acquisition of skill is driven by the balance of benefits and costs. Laziness is built deep into our nature.
  • A reliable way of making people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth.
  • This is the essence of intuitive heuristics: when faced with a difficult question, we often answer an easier one instead, usually without noticing the substitution.
  • We are prone to overestimate how much we understand about the world and to underestimate the role of chance in events.
  • We can be blind to the obvious, and we are also blind to our blindness.

Rating: 10/10
If you want to understand the world and the people in it, this is a must read. Psychology is fascinating to me, and this book continue to teach me things about human nature. Anyone can find a relevant tidbit in this book to help them live their life better. I always recommend this to other product managers as a resource to help them manage their teams.

The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph by Ryan Holiday

11/30/2018

 
Like with Tim Ferriss and Robert Greene, I'll read anything Ryan Holiday makes. The Obstacle is the Way is no exception. It blends historical accounts with Stoic Philosophy and contemporary examples. It's a quick read – I finished it on a flight from Boston to LA. Ryan filled it with little actionable tidbits and left me feeling crazy positive.

Key Takeaways
  • You get to choose how you feel about everything. It's hard to overestimate how powerful this fact is.
  • It is often the anticipation of pain, rather than pain itself, that causes so much anxiety.
  • Every challenge or obstacle contains the means to solve it and improve ourselves.

Memorable Quotes
  • There is no good or bad without us, there is only perception. There is the event itself and the story we tell ourselves about what it means.
  • We forget: In life, it doesn’t matter what happens to you or where you came from. It matters what you do with what happens and what you’ve been given.
  • Choose not to be harmed—and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed—and you haven’t been.
  • Wherever we are, whatever we’re doing and herever we are going, we owe it to ourselves, to our art, to the world to do it well.
  • Focus on the moment, not the monsters that may or may not be up ahead.
  • The obstacle in the path becomes the path. Never forget, within every obstacle is an opportunity to improve our condition.
  • If an emotion can't change the condition or the situation you're dealing with, it is likely an unhelpful emotion. Or, quite possibly, a destructive one. But it's what I feel. Right, no one said anything about not feeling it. No one said you can't ever cry. Forget "manliness." If you need to take a moment, by all means, go ahead. Real strength lies in the control or, as Nassim Taleb put it, the domestication of one's emotions, not in pretending they don't exist.
  • Where the head goes, the body follows. Perception precedes action. Right action follows the right perspective.
  • Just because your mind tells you that something is awful or evil or unplanned or otherwise negative doesn’t mean you have to agree. Just because other people say that something is hopeless or crazy or broken to pieces doesn’t mean it is. We decide what story to tell ourselves.
  • In life our first job is this, to divide and distinguish things into two categories: externals I cannot control, but the choices I make with regard to them I do control. Where will I find good and bad? In me, in my choices. —EPICTETUS
  • Andrew Carnegie famously put it. There’s nothing shameful about sweeping. It’s just another opportunity to excel—and to learn. But you, you’re so busy thinking about the future, you don’t take any pride in the tasks you’re given right now. You just phone it all in, cash your paycheck, and dream of some higher station in life. Or you think, This is just a job, it isn’t who I am, it doesn’t matter. Foolishness. Everything we do matters—whether it’s making smoothies while you save up money or studying for the bar—even after you already achieved the success you sought.
  • We’ve all done it. Said: “I am so [overwhelmed, tired, stressed, busy, blocked, outmatched].” And then what do we do about it? Go out and party. Or treat ourselves. Or sleep in. Or wait. It feels better to ignore or pretend. But you know deep down that that isn’t going to truly make it any better. You’ve got to act. And you’ve got to start now.
  • To argue, to complain, or worse, to just give up, these are choices. Choices that more often than not, do nothing to get us across the finish line.
  • All great victories, be they in politics, business, art, or seduction, involved resolving vexing problems with a potent cocktail of creativity, focus, and daring. When you have a goal, obstacles are actually teaching you how to get where you want to go—carving you a path. “The Things which hurt,” Benjamin Franklin wrote, “instruct.”

Rating: 10/10
This is the most important book I've read this year. Anyone will find a valuable takeaway here. If you're struggling with any kind of challenge, this will help you reframe and solve it. The book is timeless, and one of the texts I'll keep revisiting.

Big Potential: How Transforming the Pursuit of Success Raises Our Achievement, Happiness, and Well-Being by Shawn Achor

11/29/2018

 
My mom let me borrow Big Potential after Shawn Achor spoke at her work event (thanks mom!). It has a solid message, and some great cultural takeaways that are valuable to anyone building a team. The single big idea is that a culture of positivity is key to achieving potential. This applies both for individuals and organizations.

Key Takeaways
  • In many situations, our instinct is to compete, to be a little selfish. This is deep rooted in our psychology. That said, everyone wins with more cooperation and positivity.
  • Your surroundings have a huge impact on you (duh). Surround yourself with positive influences.
  • Build positivity into your teams to improve everyone and outcomes.

Memorable Quotes
  • We worry so much about negative peer pressure- whether from the toxic coworkers who infect us with their pessimism, the classmates constantly getting our kids into trouble, or the wealthy friends who pressure us into taking vacations we can't afford- that we often forget all about the power of positive peer pressure. Just as being around negative, unmotivated people drains our energy and potential, surrounding ourselves with positive, engaged, motivated, and creative people causes our positivity, engagement, motivation and creativity to multiply. In my work with companies, I created a formula to highlight the basic principle at the heart of this strategy: Big Potential = individual attributes X (positive influences - negative influences)
  • You are what you read. And science confirms this. Researchers from Dartmouth and Ohio State found that when you become engrossed with a book you may actually begin to not just identify with, but actually take on some of the traits and characteristics of, the main character. For example, if you read a book about someone with a strong social conscience, your likelihood of doing something socially conscientious rises.
  • And yet, my research shows that this isn't actually the case. The lightning bug researchers discovered that when the fireflies were able to time their pulses with one another with astonishing accuracy (to the millisecond!), it allowed them to space themselves apart perfectly, thus eliminating the need to compete. In the same way, when we help others become better, we can actually increase the available opportunities, instead of vying for them. Like the lightning bugs, once we learn to coordinate and collaborate with those around us, we all begin to shine brighter, both individually and as an ecosystem.
  • By denying the light of praise, we extinguish it. By bending the light toward others, we magnify it.

Rating: 7.5/10
I liked the main message of this book. I agree that positivity and excellence go hand in hand. That said, the author never passed up an opportunity to remind you he went to Harvard. This came across as bragging, and had me saying "alright, we get it!" after the fifth time. While that may lower the score of the book in my eyes, it doesn't lower the importance of the main message.

Business Model Generation by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur

11/29/2018

 
Business Model Generation is a must read for any business person. It's the best framework I know of for understanding and communicating a business or idea. I've used the framework my whole professional career. I enjoyed revisiting the genesis point and picked up a couple new ideas.

Key Takeaways
  • Business Models have 9 key parts in this framework:
  • Customer Segments
  • Value Propositions
  • Channels
  • Customer Relationships
  • Revenue Streams
  • Key Resources
  • Key Activities
  • Key Partnerships
  • Cost Structure
  • The Business Model Canvas presents these 9 pieces in a way that shows their relation to one another.
  • Visualizing a business model allows you to understand a business. It then allows you to experiment with ways of changing that business to see what happens.
  • You can use your Business Model Canvas to tell a story about the business to interested parties.
  • You need to review your business model to understand if and how it needs to change.

Memorable Quotes
  • A business model describes the rationale of how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value
  • A business model really is a system where one element influences the other; it only makes sense as a whole. Capturing that big picture without visualizing it is difficult. In fact, by visually depicting a business model, one turns its tacit assumptions into explicit information. This makes the model tangible and allows for clearer discussions and changes. Visual techniques give “life” to a business model and facilitate co-creation.
  • companies should focus on one of three value disciplines: operational excellence, product leadership, or customer intimacy.
  • One way multi-sided platforms solve this problem is by subsidizing a Customer Segment. Though a platform operator incurs costs by serving all customer groups, it often decides to lure one segment to the platform with an inexpensive or free Value Proposition in order to subsequently attract users of the platform’s “other side.” One difficulty multi-sided platform operators face is understanding which side to subsidize and how to price correctly to attract customers.
  • A Value Proposition creates value for a Customer Segment through a distinct mix of elements catering to that segment’s needs. Values may be quantitative (e.g. price, speed of service) or qualitative (e.g. design, customer experience).
  • There’s not a single business model . . . There are really a lot of opportunities and a lot of options and we just have to discover all of them.” Tim O’Reilly, CEO, O’Reilly
  • Telling a story that illustrates how your business model solves a customer problem is a clear way to introduce listeners to the idea. Stories give you the “buy-in” needed to subsequently explain your model in detail.
  • Like seeing the doctor for an annual exam, regularly assessing a business model is an important management activity that allows an organization to evaluate the health of its market position and adapt accordingly.

Rating: 9/10

This is a great book for anyone in business. It's best read when thinking through your own examples. Use an idea or existing business not covered in the book. Try reverse engineering a canvas from an existing company to better understand it!

Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies by Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh

11/29/2018

 
Blitzscaling looks at the strategy of rapid growth startups across the world. It delves into the strategies used when speed is more important that efficiency. Hoffman, a cofounder of Paypal and LinkedIn seems to hold a keen understanding of how to make this work. He has two humongous companies to show for this understanding. The book covers a set of counterintuitive principles of blitzscaling. Hoffman illustrates these principles through examples of well known companies.

Key Takeaways
  • Blitzscaling is a strategic decision your company must make.
  • Blitzscaling is most appropriate when you're playing in a winner take all market.
  • Blitzscaling means prioritizing speed over efficiency and other "common sense" business practices.
  • Blitzscaling companies find creative ways to win their markets.
  • Blitzscaling takes many more resources than normal growth.

Memorable Quotes
  • There’s a common misconception that Silicon Valley is the accelerator of the world. The real story is that the world keeps getting faster—Silicon Valley is just the first place to figure out how to keep pace. While Silicon Valley certainly has many key networks and resources that make it easier to apply the techniques we’re going to lay out for you, blitzscaling is made up of basic principles that do not depend on geography.
  • Facebook excelled at distribution. As noted earlier, Facebook’s early focus on college students, which caused some to dismiss it as a niche product, was actually part of an extremely successful distribution strategy. To achieve incredible virality, Facebook would deliberately delay launching at a college campus until over 50 percent of the students had requested it so that local critical mass was reached almost immediately. Facebook further benefited from leveraging existing friend networks to expand outward from its original college user base. As users experienced the benefits of staying connected via Facebook, they naturally wanted to add their off-line friends to the network.
  • Slack had spent nearly five years and $ 17 million on development prior to its public launch in February 2014. Just two months later, before the end of April, it had raised another $ 43 million. Both of these investments took place before Slack had proven its revenue model and started generating significant sales. Slack’s freemium business model (offering a free service and encouraging users to upgrade later to becoming paying customers) meant that even after two months of rapid user growth, the company hadn’t proven its ability to make money. Fortunately for Slack and its investors, this aggressiveness paid off. As the initial wave of free users started converting to paid, Slack was able to raise an additional $ 120 million six months later to accelerate its growth even further.
  • Sadly, premature blitzscaling can sometimes kill a nascent market by “poisoning the well” so dramatically that investors and entrepreneurs avoid the space. For example, Webvan’s notorious failure kept most players out of the grocery delivery space for over a decade.
  • My friend Marc Andreessen has argued that “software is eating the world.” What he means is that even industries that focus on physical products (atoms) are integrating with software (bits). Tesla makes cars (atoms), but a software update (bits) can upgrade the acceleration of those cars and add an autopilot overnight. The spread of software and computing into every industry, along with the dense networks that connect us all, means that the lessons of blitzscaling are becoming more relevant and easier to implement, even in mature or low-tech industries. To use a computing metaphor, technology is accelerating the world’s “clock speed” (the rate at which Central Processing Units [CPUs] operate), making change occur faster than previously thought possible. Not only is the world moving faster, but the speed at which major new technology platforms are being created is reducing the downtime between the arrivals of each wave of innovation.
  • In the words of leadership guru Marshall Goldsmith, “What got you here won’t get you there.” Market share and revenue growth earn headlines, but you can’t achieve customer and revenue scale without scaling up your organization, in terms of the size and scope of your staff, as well as your financial, product, and technology strategy. If the organization doesn’t grow in lockstep with its revenues and customer base, things can quickly spiral out of control. For example, during a period of blitzscaling in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Oracle Corporation focused so single-mindedly on sales growth that its organization lagged badly on both technology (where it fell behind archrival Sybase’s) and finance and nearly went bankrupt as a result. It took the turnaround efforts of Ray Lane and Jeff Henley to stave off disaster and reposition Oracle for its later success.

Rating: 8/10

There are a lot of great tactics and strategies covered in this book. It does sometimes come across as some chest pumping from Reid – "at LinkedIn we did [X, Y, Z] and it worked..." I'd still recommend this to any entrepreneur, especially anyone currently scaling a business. Aspiring startup founders will also find some worthwhile thinking points here.

The Business Blockchain: Promise, Practice, and Application of the Next Internet Technology by William Mougayar

11/14/2018

 
In many ways The Business Blockchain is like Blockchain Revolution. William Mougayar does a great job of touching on key aspects of Bitcoin and Blockchain. He covers design principles, business opportunities, and challenges. It's definitely early and speculative, but I enjoyed the wide range of examples. A little less rosey in outlook, the book provides a more balanced view of the new technology.

Key Takeaways
  • Blockchain is a new layer of trust built upon the peer to peer internet.
  • Blockchain is a new economic paradigm.
  • With blockchain, I no longer need to trust a person, I only need to trust physics and math.
  • Blockchain pushes value from centralized intermediaries to the edges of the network.

Memorable Quotes
  • People do not buy fortune cookies because they taste better than every other cookie on the shelf. They buy them for the delight they deliver at the end of a meal. Marketers spend most of their time selling the cookie, when what they should be doing is finding a way to create a better fortune. Of course your job is to bake a good cookie, the very best that you can, but you must also spend time figuring out how to tell a great story.
  • Online identity and reputation will be decentralized. We will own the data that belongs to us.
  • There will be dozens of commonly used, global virtual currencies that will be considered mainstream, and their total market value will exceed $5 trillion, and represent 5% of the world’s $100 trillion economy in 2025.
  • Today, we google for everything, mostly information or products. Tomorrow, we will perform the equivalent of “googling” to verify records, identities, authenticity, rights, work done, titles, contracts, and other valuable asset-related processes. There will be digital ownership certificates for everything.
  • The uncertainties, however, cannot be used as an excuse to hold up what must be done. All of us engaged are pioneers on a journey, and we have a responsibility to keep sharing what we are learning, so we can keep lighting the way for those that are behind us. It may take us longer to arrive at our destinations, but it will certainly help the followers, and they will pay us back by making the market bigger and easier to navigate.

Rating: 8/10
This all felt familiar after reading Blockchain Revolution. I'm sure if I read them in the opposite order, I'd feel otherwise. Still a great view of the new tech. A good overview for someone in business with a slight technical leaning. Like the internet, blockchain seems likely to touch every industry. Even if it doesn't, I'd recommend getting familiar with the benefits of the new technology.
I'm in search of my next book on Crypto or the Blockchain. If you know of anything worth reading, please share!
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