In 2016, 13 years after being in existence, Tesla made a one-word switch in its mission statement.  The old mission statement read, "Tesla's mission is to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable transport." The updated mission statement became, "Tesla's mission is to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy."  I highlight this change because it opens up a different window to peek into the house of Tesla. The general perception built around Tesla is that it is a car company focused on speeding up our transition to electric or sustainable transport, but the mission statement change and newer product lines indicate that...

I'm going to throw you a challenge. Assume you have to start a university that would become the richest and the most prestigious educational institutions in humankind's history.  What plan of action would you create? What business model would you choose? How would you make it financially viable for the centuries ahead? A predictable approach would be to build a sustainable brand by providing top-notch education, establishing artificial scarcity by making applicants go through a challenging selection process, and ensuring students get placed in high-income jobs. In exchange for all of this, students would be willing to pay exorbitant fees.  But that's...

Originally a designer focussed on consulting, Paul Jarvis has written five books (including 'Company of One'), sold digital courses, and co-founded Fathom Analytics, a privacy-focused Google Analytics Alternative. His contrarian philosophy of purposefully staying small and questioning the conventional wisdom of building a big business empire has shaped Paul's long, successful, and personally meaningful career. In 'Company of One,' Paul shares the ideas behind his choosing this alternate path in business, and more broadly, in life -- a mindful approach based on designing work around life, not the other way around. Note: 'Company of One' contains 13 chapters but the book...

"I have never seen viral enterprise app takeoff like this before — all word of mouth," tweeted March Andresson in February 2014, six months after Slack launched in preview mode in August 2013. The tweet accompanied a slide from Slack's investor update deck. Slack is an embodiment of Silicon Valley's dream growth trajectory. On the first day of its preview launch itself, 8000 people requested an invitation to try out Slack. Two weeks later, the number had more than doubled to 15000.  In Feb 2014, when Slack dropped the preview and launched officially, around 16000 users were using the service daily. By the end...

Discord is a classic example of building a product to cater to a specific audience segment, only to find out other audiences you weren't initially targeting, finding value in your product, and using it. And so much so that, five years later, after its launch in early 2015, the discord team let go of its original identity, deciding to embrace the direction they were pulled into by users. Jason Citron & Stan Vishnevskiy, gamers themselves, originally built Discord for gamers. A typical user would be someone who played video games a lot, and while they were at it, used Discord to talk to...

Acclaimed Silicon Valley Journalist Brad Stone has been covering Amazon since its early days. "The Everything Store," is a result of Stone drawing upon his writing experience and interviewing numerous Amazon executives, with the blessings of Jeff Bezos. The book provides a comprehensive account of Amazon's growth from its 1996 inception until 2013, the year of publishing. Reading the book was fruitful because it gave me a window into Amazon's way of thinking & helped me understand Amazon's complex business by breaking it down into distinct components. I've structured my book summary such that it should do the same for...

Before I briefly explain the note-taking process, I want to take a few sentences to introduce William Zinsser, the author of 'On Writing Well.'  A lifelong nonfiction writer, William began his career as a journalist for the New York Herald Tribune in 1946. In the 1970s, he taught a writing class at Yale University. He also wrote 18 books in a writing career spanning more than half a century. First published in 1976, 'On Writing Well' is widely regarded as his best work. To date, it has served as the canonical writing book for three generations of writers, journalists, & editors.  In...

I read the book & highlighted the key ideas to create a distilled yet detailed version of the subject matter. Whether you're looking to gauge if the full book is worth your time or want to revisit ideas you've already read, my summary should come in handy. Book Summary of ‘Shape Up: Stop Running in Circles & Ship Work that Matters’ by ‘Ryan Singer’. Chapter 1: Introduction This book isn’t about the risk of building the wrong thing. Other books can help you with that (we recommend Competing Against Luck). This book is about the risk of getting stuck, the risk of getting...

"Product Hunt surfaces the best new products, every day. It's a place for product-loving enthusiasts to share and geek out about the latest mobile apps, websites, hardware projects, and tech creations" If you work in technology and don't keep a daily tab of Product Hunt, one could argue that you're missing out on relevant insider information.  In some ways, Product Hunt is like Techcrunch, except it surfaces new tech products instead of new tech stories.  Tech enthusiasts use it to stay in the know. Emerging startups list themselves to get in front of the people that matter. Investors use it to scour investment...

I read the book -- highlighted material that stood out, trimmed it down to the essential & made minor edits to align the text with the summary format. People who have read the book a long time ago, forgotten the book matter to a certain degree, and would like to refresh their memory of its content would benefit the most from the notes considering the way we've designed them. If you haven't read the book, we'd recommend buying and reading it, because it's not just about knowing key lessons. Reading a book forces you to think about the idea at length....