Don’t Let Conflict Fester

Bijan Sabet of Spark Capital on what it means to be fearless as a leader: Too often we try to avoid conflicts, simply hoping tomorrow will be better or frankly that there is only 10 minutes left in this meeting. But conflict avoidance isn’t being fearless. It’s not fair to you, the person you are […]

Don’t Be Afraid to Fail in Public

Sarah Friar, CEO of the social network Nextdoor, on lessons learned from working for Jack Dorsey at Square: Jack told me over and over again is, don’t be afraid to fail in public. It’s very wise advice, particularly for women and particularly given my background. There was always this sense of having to be perfect, […]

Tesla’s Open-Source Patent Pledge

Freeing up all Tesla’s patents was a bold, smart strategic move by Elon Musk. Helping the car industry innovate faster than their competitors is—in a good way—good for the planet and for Tesla. Tesla Motors was created to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport. If we clear a path to the creation of compelling electric […]

Singapore: Efficient, Smooth, Comfortable and Safe

Paul Callan, author of The Brigadier’s Daughter (2017) recalls how a journey to Singapore sparked a creative idea: On approach into Singapore, the sight from out of the clouds lends itself to the orderliness of what repeatedly spellbinds me. On the drive into the city, rows of great umbrella-spread rain trees border the highway, until […]

The Problem with Single Founders

Paul Graham from Y-Combinator expounds what’s wrong with having one founder: What’s wrong with having one founder? To start with, it’s a vote of no confidence. It probably means the founder couldn’t talk any of his friends into starting the company with him. That’s pretty alarming, because his friends are the ones who know him […]

Sports: The Isolated Cultural Corner

For Blasting News (UK), Duncan Bradley wonders why sports remains the most isolated cultural corner we have: Sport is everywhere but do you ever notice that it’s always on its own? Music and film have been copulating for decades now, so too have food and art, politics and architecture, dance and theatre. Yet sport remains […]

Bernard Shaw on Darwin’s ‘The Origin of the Species’

George Bernard Shaw in his preface to Back to Methuselah (1920): If very few of us have read The Origin of the Species from end to end, it is not because it overtaxes our mind, but because we take in the whole case and are prepared to accept it long before we have come to […]

The Runaway Success of the Airbus A321XLR

Ernest Arvai of the Air Insight Group is doubtful that Boeing can match Airbus’ success in the large narrow-body market. coming out of the pandemic, Airbus has the right product at the right time (the A321XLR) and Boeing doesn’t. The A321XLR provides the economics of a narrow-body aircraft with a longer range, making the aircraft […]

American Athletes Insist That God’s Got to Be on Their Side

Dave Hannigan of the Irish Times observes that praising the Lord is as fundamental to American sport as pom-pom girls: Moments after unfurling a touchdown pass to Jermaine Kearse that punched the Seattle Seahawks’ ticket to the Super Bowl, quarterback Russell Wilson joined a bunch of his team-mates as they knelt in a prayer circle […]

Predicting Isn’t Enough

Morgan Housel of the Collaborative Fund draws attention to how information and metrics are always changing: Investment facts are always changing. But prediction is doubly hard because the facts investors care about and pay attention to—which is what makes facts relevant—change all the time. Not just by industry, but for the market as a whole. […]