PinnedReading listBelow are the books with ideas I found useful in work and life. The books are grouped in a few sections and listed in the order I’d read them. Investing Dear Chairman Tap dancing to work One up Wall Street A random walk down Wall Street Berkshire Hathaway letters to shareholders …1 min read1 min read
Sep 27EROI confusion and Humanity as a flea on a dog’s backRecently I’ve been thinking about two aspects of EROI that I couldn’t wrap my head around: What’s the connection between the LCOE and EROI for different energy sources and how to reconcile the mediocre EROI numbers for some of the energy sources (solar, wind) with the great LCOE numbers? What’s…Energy6 min readEnergy6 min read
Sep 13Charlie Munger, Dating Apps, and Dangers of ImpartialityI recently came across an article discussing a seeming paradox in the world of dating. It seems that despite the proliferation of dating apps and dating opportunities, many users now find themselves endlessly dating for years, far from finding their match. The article talked about several potential contributors to this…Investing4 min readInvesting4 min read
May 8Billion dollar coachesA great coach can be an incredibly valuable partner to the startup CEO, but finding one can be challenging. To help with the search, below are the coaches recommended to me by the CEOs of multiple $1B+ companies (hence the name) like Automattic, Cockroach Labs, Outreach, Aurora Solar, StockX, ApplyBoard…Coaching1 min readCoaching1 min read
Apr 15Series A fundraising playbookThis write-up is about raising the post-seed/A round when you already have some initial traction to back your story. That said, most of the ideas below apply to earlier/later fundraising too. As a founder, you don’t get to fundraise often, maybe just a handful of times throughout the lifetime of…Fundraising2 min readFundraising2 min read
Feb 1The thrill of TRIZRecently in a conversation with Saman Farid, the CEO of Formic, we touched on TRIZ. It isn’t as well known as Design Thinking, Six Sigma, Lean, etc., but a very powerful approach to systematic inventing. The author (Genrich Altshuller, a prolific inventor himself) reviewed 40k+ patents in the 50s and…Startup3 min readStartup3 min read
Dec 10, 2022The ticket from Earth problemProblem: An asteroid is about to destroy Earth. Humanity has built a spaceship that can fit a fraction of the population. There are two lotteries, you can participate in one only. Both are supposed to have a 1 in 100 chance of you getting a ticket, but you discovered that…Probability3 min readProbability3 min read
Nov 2, 2022Building an AI-powered companyAI is one of the most important technologies of this century holding the promise of breakthroughs in energy, health, and pretty much every other field of human activity. AI capabilities have been evolving at a breakneck speed over the last few years enticing entrepreneurs to start companies and leverage these…Startup23 min readStartup23 min read
Aug 3, 2022Main problems of the modern AI systems and areas of researchWhile modern AI systems demonstrate quite impressive results in tasks ranging from image recognition to playing Go and even explaining jokes, these are still the early days, and there are multiple areas for improvement, some of which are listed below [1]. Many of them are interconnected and will likely require…AI5 min readAI5 min read
Jun 21, 2022Evaluating blockchain use casesThe purpose of this note is to suggest a framework for evaluating different types of players/use cases in the Public Blockchain Ecosystem (BCE) and their viability at the current stage of the BCE development. It is done by identifying key value drivers (KVDs) of the BCE, applying KVDs to find…Blockchain6 min readBlockchain6 min read
