Insights

What you all learned from this year – A couple weeks ago, I asked readers of this newsletter to send me your biggest life lessons from this year. Nearly 1,300 of you responded, some with multiple pages of thoughts and experiences. After going through them all, I highlighted the ten most common themes and insights…
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“In just a few short weeks on the job, I had already realized that because every tough decision came down to a probability, then certainty was an impossibility — which could leave me encumbered by the sense that I could never get it quite right. So rather than let myself get paralyzed in the quest…
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This is an  interesting opinion piece that highlights how documentaries can distort our view of reality, and specifically how omission of facts can deceive. But it isn’t just documentaries that do this. More broadly speaking, whenever the public is given “facts” about anything, there is always a lens through which the information is presented. So…
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How many time have you sat at the bargaining table, and wondered, “am I negotiating with liars?” And to your own self be true—how many times have you been untruthful in a negotiation? The example below shines a light on how lies can get negotiators into hot water.In July 2014, Jesse Litvak, the former managing…
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My Learnings: 1. As a fund continuous returns are important. 2.  Winning with consistency requires discipline. Finding breakout winners is everything but how a #VC fund operates determines repeatability. What worked for us: Trusting our own insight, diligence and future casting vs. investing entirely based on team and TAM.  3. Outcomes are a result of…
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Today Google DeepMind announced that their deep learning system AlphaFold has achieved unprecedented levels of accuracy on the “protein folding problem”, a grand challenge problem in computational biochemistry. What is this problem, and why is it hard? I don’t usually do science reporting here at The Roots of Progress, but I spent a couple years on this problem…
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Play has significant cognitive, emotional, and social benefits for elementary school children. Periods of play at school help students to focus, build friendships, improve mood, work cooperatively, and work through conflict without adult intervention. Advocating for Play (starts on page 229)  

As a new partner at Bessemer in 2010, Alex Ferrara’s first investment recommendation raised eyebrows when he led the Series A round for a young, first-time CEO in Ottawa selling SaaS to tiny online storefronts. Ten years later, Shopify is the infrastructure for millions of entrepreneurs and major brands with a market capitalization worth more than $130…
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Ten years ago, within days, my father died and my daughter was born, and all I wanted to do was end the nonstop distractions and slow time down. I needed a revolution to transform the situation, and remarkably, I found it. My husband, Ken, and I started a practice of turning off all screens and…
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If you’re efficient, you’re doing it the wrong way. The right way is the hard way. The show was successful because I micromanaged it — every word, every line, every take, every edit, every casting. That’s my way of life. Jerry Seinfeld https://hbr.org/2017/01/lifes-work-jerry-seinfeld%E2%80%8B