Daily Reads:
Listened to Rishad Tobaccowala interview side hustle expert Chris Guillebeau on his podcast What Next. It prompted me to follow Chris’ podcast – Side Hustle School and listen to several stories of side hustlers earning their first $1,000. The stories are <5 minutes long, and reflect on both the successes and failures of getting there. He’s done over 2500 episodes, which is stunning discipline.
In Regretful accelerationism, Ben Thompson comes around to the idea that despite the riches of the internet for his personal benefit, there is merit in humanity finding ways back to what is real.
His post also had the phrase Schelling point so had to look it up. It refers to a solution or focal point that people tend to use in the absence of communication because it seems special or relevant to them. Named after Thomas Schelling who introduced it in the context of Game Theory. It’s based on common knowledge, knowledge that everyone knows everyone knows.
Is the idea of unit economics back in business vocabulary? I’ve heard it mentioned in nearly every recent product podcast recently. Making a profit on each unit of product or service guarantees that the company will be profitable at whatever scale it reaches. For the last 20 or so years in the cheap finance world, that seemed like a quaint idea, but is now coming right back into fashion.
Efoso Ojomo is a senior research fellow at the Clayton Christensen Institue for Disruptive Innovation. He argues in this post that corruption is ‘hired’ to make progress. When society offers few legitimate options to make progress, corruption becomes attractive.
Matt Webb shares a framework for exploring Generative AI as a tech savvy org.
QOTD:
I suspect we humans do better with constraints; the Internet stripped away the constraint of physical distribution, and now AI is removing the constraint of needing to actually produce content.
– Ben Thompson ^QOTD
Music:
Zach Bryan: Something in the Orange