Watch/Listen:
Birth of The Transistor: A video history of Japan's Electronics industry (Part 1) - Perhaps the most fascinating video I’ve seen. This is not conversation, but actual video recordings from 1940s-50s when Japan started setting up its Electronics industry atop the devastation from WWII. Great insight on how scientists worked from first principles with little-to-no resources and were fanatically committed to making things work.
Eight Sleep: Future of Rest, with Matteo Franceschetti - Paul Graham ordered the Eight Sleep Pod within 5 minutes of listening to Matteo’s pitch. This is an incredible conversation on building a D2C brand, a hardtech business, operational excellence, developing your team and more. Valuable right till the end! Sean had some great questions.
Steve Hsu - Intelligence, Embryo Selection & The Future of Humanity - Dwarkesh Patel interviews Steve Hsu, founder of Genomic Predictions and a former theoretical physicist. Great insights on how genomic prediction works and realities of genetically engineering humans.
Growth Hacking to a Billion Dollar Marketplace - Grant, the Founder of Whatnot ( a collectibles marketplace and livestreaming shopping platform) discusses with Anu Hariharan what the first year of Whatnot was like and how they grew 120% in a single month.
How to Win by Daniel Gross - Former YC partner Daniel Gross talks about building habits to help you win and mental frameworks for an entrepreneur
Dave Farrow chats with Gaurab Chakrabarti, Solugen Co-Founder - This is a chat from 2017, before Solugen became a well-known unicorn. Fun story on how it was started, the early team and culture, how they’re finding customers and future plans.
Krebs Cycle - Prof. Nick Lane’s energy is infectious even on video. Incredible talk on how the Krebs cycle keeps us alive and what it tells us about the origin of life. Innumerable surprises in this video.
Read:
A Mathematician’s Lament, Paul Lockhart - Excellent read on what’s wrong with how Mathematics is taught and how it should be approached.
Rockefeller Foundation, Samir Unni - Immensely fascinating read on the Rockefeller Foundation’s Natural Sciences Division and its less-known Program Officers who funded the work of “all but one of the 18 scientists who received a Nobel Prize for genetic molecular biology research” in the dozen years after the discovery of DNA’s structure in 1953.
Startups and TAMs, Tanay Jaipuria - Useful introduction to some approaches for determining Total Addressable Market (TAM) for startups.
Your Career is Just One-Eighth of Your Life, Derek Thompson, The Atlantic - I bristled a bit at the title on this piece, and generally am skeptical about generic advice. But, Derek actually has some good, actionable suggestions in here.
Sonal Choksi’s Bio, Sonal Choksi - Sonal is the Editor-in-Chief at the majestic VC firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). She talks about her work, profession and person in this bio that tells you more than you could learn about a person in a 1-hour chat.
Silicon Valley’s New Obsession, Derek Thompson, The Atlantic - New ways of funding scientific research are emerging in Silicon Valley. New organizations, funded by tech billionaires, are re-creating in Bell Labs’ style, the opportunity for brilliant researchers to pursue projects of their choice with generous backing and resources. Derek summarizes the ethos of the three main ‘startups’ that have emerged in this space.
Bacteria's Immune Sensors Reveal a Novel Way to Detect Viruses, Annie Melchor, Quanta Magazine - In another celebration of KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid), scientists have found out that bacteria can detect viral infection by recognizing the 3-D structure of a variety of viral proteins. The recognition is not based on their chemical components, but simply the 3D structure.
Luck and the entrepreneur: The four kinds of Luck, Marc Andreessen - There’s more than to luck than ‘blind luck’, and you can be ready for when it happens.
Age and the Entrepreneur, part 1: Some data, Marc Andreessen
The Mathematical Genius Who Starved Himself to Death, Sunny Labh - Short and unbelievable bio of Kurt Gödel.