My 2023 Reading Journey

The year of new beginnings

In the year that’ll be stamped in history as the start of the AI revolution, for me it’ll forever carry a similar air of new beginnings. While I thoroughly enjoyed playing, testing, and building with many of the new tools that became available, as I flicked back (sans GPT) on my pictures from the year, what stands out are the monumental moments spent with friends and family that AI will never be able to replace.

“The more things seem to change, the more they stay the same”

Just as we all breathed in the first few breaths of the new year, (which were very, very cold in Milwaukee), I was letting out a sigh of relief. Over three years in the works, my Green Card finally landed in the mailbox. As an immigrant in any country will say, visas and all the hassle that goes with them cast a consistent shadow of uncertainty. For all the work and waiting that fills the process, the actual “unboxing” is quite funny. Firstly, the card isn’t really green anymore but secondly, the little “Welcome to the United States” booklet that accompanies it is laughably abstracted from reality. For the people that successfully jump through all these legal hoops, being told to “find accommodation”, “prepare for emergencies” and “find information…on the internet” in as blunt bullet points as those, triggered a good belly laugh.

One useful tip it does include is regarding the pathway to actually becoming a citizen. Much like the classic Foil, Arms, and Hog sketch, what better way to embrace my newfound identity than doubling down on the reading front by going back to the roots of capitalism, innovation, and big tech with “The Master Switch”. It was an interesting time to read this book as GPT-4 was released. Long-standing businesses like Google Search were thrown into massive doubt and Hollywood went on strike for months with content ownership and rights a key point in the conflict. Just as Tim Wu recounted countless stories of conglomerates broken up or out-innovated by newcomers, it’s difficult not to see those same patterns around us today.

Another empire that AI will fail to challenge is the Irish diaspora spread throughout the world. Americans in particular, all feel a little or a lot Irish, but everyone’s ability to get hyped up for St. Patrick’s Day always brings joy to my heart. In a particularly divisive year between conflict in Ukraine, Palestine, and beyond, it’s heartwarming to have that sense of most of the world joining in celebration of our national holiday. For me, that was best put on display in Milwaukee of all places this year. In addition to having North America’s largest “Irish Fest” which gets a sincere stamp of approval from yours truly, the St. Patrick’s Day parade it hosts is amazing. For a state that has one of the lowest Irish-American populations, it puts on a show. With over 10 Irish dancing groups fluttering their feet the length of the course, floats with bodhran’s and trad music, GAA teams, and a host of Irish dog breeds I‘d never heard of, everyone in the greater city area gets involved, even The Dancing Grannies.

Speaking of dancing into the later years, my next group of books took me to learning more about the biology and nuances of the body. With the uptick in talk about Metformin, Ozempic, and the like, I wanted to understand what lay at the cellular level and what research had gone into these areas up to now. While I look forward to reading Peter Attia’s book in 2024, The Body: A Guide for Occupants, and more specifically, Lifespan: Why We Age — and Why We Don’t Have To helped me get to the nub of those questions this year. Upon finishing both books, I learned so much about everything from the genome to the function of parts of the brain, but the everlasting logic of eat well, sleep well, exercise a lot and choose your parents (😂) still seems to be the best advice for maximizing longevity. When it comes to Metformin and other diabetes medications, while the short-term benefits seem positive, the long-term impact is yet to be indicated in any of the major studies that have been completed. Listening to Huberman’s journal club episode will help with the statistical significance I won’t get into here. I’d be remiss to note that this is exactly what Emily (a doctor) told me before I read any of the books, after denying my half-joking requests for a prescription!

Another mistake I’ve made in prior years was getting too bogged down by non-fiction and information-heavy books. This year I set out to deliberately change that, mixing a lighter fiction book in between at least every couple of the heavier books to keep the momentum up. I don’t have a strong selection criteria for these. I’m more easily influenced by what’s on show in my favorite Chicago bookstore in addition to the odd cover that stands out. I do tend towards Sci-Fi, however, and Project Hail Mary was the first one up this year. An excellent story of intergalactic friendship and the power of duct tape in all situations, this was probably the book that was hardest to leave down. Closer to home, the bond that was building was with my Gaelic football team, the Miltown Gaels which picked up spirits during a rough winter. Training a couple of times a week and then meeting up to watch GAA, Rugby, soccer games, and more made the winter months fly. Good hard training, plenty of craic and cheap pitchers set the foundation for what would be an amazing year for us, in a club that was over 90% American-born.

As we were preparing for games in the weeks ahead, I was both looking back into history and planning further into the future. Looking backward through time was aided by the lens of Guy Raz, whose podcast I’ve listened to for years, and his book by the same name, “How I Built This” tells the untold story of the amazing founders behind many of the smaller companies who keep the economy turning but go unrecognized and underappreciated. It’s a well-structured book focused on many founders who took a leap of faith to go all in on what they believed in. On May 16th, I took less of a leap of faith, and instead one filled with confidence when I limbered up my knee and proposed to my girlfriend Emily. While I didn't get her to the exact location I’d planned for, we got one of the most beautiful and sunny days of the year — which are few and far between in the west of Ireland. There are very few things I’ve been as confident of in life, but I’d definitely reconsider my attire if we were to do it again. The heat caught me off guard, and the only way I could hide the ring and its box was to keep it safely in the pocket of my winter coat! That aside, I’m delighted she said yes, and I can’t wait to build our future together.

With new beginnings, other tales must begin their final scene. With Emily graduating from her residency program, our time in Milwaukee was coming to a close just as the football season (and weather) was heating up. After winning our own tournament in Milwaukee, June saw us take our talents to the Indy 9’s. With the odds stacked against us through injuries within an already tight squad, we beat the heat and the back-to-back semi-final and final to emerge victorious and take the first men’s silverware for the club back north. With our sisters in arms the “Dairy Girls” winning too, it was a thoroughly successful weekend. However, just like home, there’s always politics involved with the GAA, so we’d have to battle it out all over again in Gaelic Park weeks later to book our ticket to Denver for Nationals.

The Martian was my read for July and another book that was difficult to leave down. July was a whirlwind with moving back to Chicago, so something familiar seemed like an apt choice. Just as Mark Watney needs to plant and grow his potatoes from scratch, I was replanting and digging up some of the relationships and seeds I had planted years earlier. Some of those lay in Vancouver where I met up with a collection of friends from childhood, college, ND, and beyond for a couple of days as we explored what we titled the “Canadian Seattle”. Between cold plunges, a close encounter with a bear, and amazing views, having some active days away from the laptop to celebrate my birthday was a great way to ring in the second half of the year.

August ramped up the pace of everything even more. However, there was a significant and bright light at the end of the tunnel. After over 5 years at Telnyx, I had put my request in to avail of the sabbatical period. In preparation, there was the always never-ending list of to-dos mixed with trying to get a lot of the documentation and processes in place that would hopefully hold up in my absence and potentially keep my slack a little quieter. That consumed any free second over the weekends as we traveled to some weddings on Emily’s side but I did manage to sneak in a quick read, “A Technique for Producing Ideas”. It’s one of my favorite books that I try and get through fully every couple of years in addition to always being on my beside locker to piece through a couple of times a month. It was those ideas I went searching for as we lined up in 40°C/104°F for our first game vs Delco Gaels in the USGAA nationals in Denver. The ideas were lacking besides applying sun-screen and hydrating, but our game plan was solid and we got blessed with cloudy skies for the entirety of our game — almost laughable, me thankful for rain! We emerged victorious, representing the first win for the club’s men's team at Nationals. Unfortunately, we’d be taken down the following day by the Cayman Islands, whose team had a dubious number of Irish lads. But, great craic was had by all that evening celebrating the best of all things Irish around the clubhouse filled with Taytos, Fruit Pastilles, and Club Orange!

After another tough week, late Friday night I’d shut my laptop and close out some tabs that had been open for weeks on my work laptop as my sabbatical began. I had some key objectives for my time off. Ready Player One accompanied me through a lot of the first couple weeks of my break. Like Wade Watts inside the OASIS, I had near-boundless time and freedom to do as I wished. However, just as IOI is consistently breathing down his neck, I felt the need to maximize every day and would plan out weekly blocks down to almost the hour for most days. Adding items like “run”, “swim”, “code block” etc to my calendar gave me a taste of what it must be like to be one of the super wealthy in society that has already cashed in their startup chips. It was a privileged position and I’m very thankful to my team and Telnyx who helped make it happen.

As Wade and Art3mis collected their keys, I tried to check off the big items on my list. First off was getting the details of our wedding planned for 2024. Early rises were kept consistent, hopping on calls around 6 am to chat with venues and other vendors, but after a couple of weeks, with lots of help from Emily, we got all the big ticket items crossed off the list. In parallel, I was trying to find out where the tech community in Chicago had gone. The flame has dimmed since pre-COVID, but it hasn’t yet gone out, and I was fortunate to connect with some amazing people in the community I aim to partner with further in 2024. One thing that hasn’t changed in Chicago though is the traffic, and I’ll soon be adding to it. I finally got around to getting my full driver’s license albeit with Illinois making the process insanely difficult to comprehend — I created a video thereafter to make it easier for folks like me!

However, it wasn't all work. I was very intentional about getting outside as much as possible and I ramped up my Strava usage and brought down my 5k/10k times. Besides my Covid week, I hit above 10k steps every day and really focused on improving at swimming (long way to go) and doing yoga to ease the niggles I’ve had in my back and knees. With a little bit each day, I continued to feel better and more energetic with each passing week. Between family visiting Chicago and us making a trip home and to London, my travels were unexotic, but filled with laughs, family, friends, and memorable moments — which is what matters. Before my travels, Love by Roddy Doyle was the cover that caught my eye in the bookshop. A very unusual and long tale, but one that eloquently describes the ambiance you can only find over a quiet pint, and the essence of feeling something that you, even after months of thinking, cannot put into words. It’s a single, long and convoluted conversation, but all I can say is that this is a book that’ll make you feel a range of emotions. If you do end up reading it, please let me know what you think as I’m still unsure of what I think about it!

One book I’m sure of my love for had been on my list for years. “The Innovators Dilemma” finally got picked off the shelf this year and will be one that I’ll constantly revisit. I flip-flop between Kindle and physical books, but this is one book I’m glad I could scribble all over with thoughts, notes, and random ideas. It was midway through my break when I picked this up and at the time, a consistent part of my day was spending time catching up on and learning more about all the AI tools that had been launched. With that, lots of ideas were floating around and I was super thankful to just be able to spend hours at a time honing in on some programming problem or optimization. Often when Emily came home, I couldn’t quite describe what I had been up to besides tinkering with something, but then on the last Friday of the sabbatical, it all started to fit into place. I had spoken to over 10 Heads of Growth during my time off, and AI was something we kept coming back to as something we all wanted to spend more time on. Everyone was doing something amazing in a niche, but that knowledge wasn’t being shared in the same way as growth hacking in the 2016–2019 era. That’s when the idea for buildaifirst.com came to me. It helped me make sense of all the tinkering I had been doing, and gave me a level of accountability for continuing the work past my break, in addition to a broader vision of what interests me in the long run — building! While my time contribution to it is limited to very early mornings and weekends right now, I’m hoping that in 2024 I can connect with like-minded people and push the community and our joined learning forwards.

One place where I could have grabbed some time back in 2023 was from reading Recursion. A book that had boundless potential, just seemed to have too many local maxima without ever delivering a knockout blow. Instead, it was like watching two fighters dance around the ring as each second in every round felt like a lifetime. Maybe I missed some very deep meaning, but when I went looking for lighter, sci-fi reads, I wish I had left Recursion back on the digital shelf. Conversely, Shoe Dog, the story of Nike was one I’m glad to have selected on my list and one that had sat collecting dust for years. In one way, it tied together the best pieces of “How I Built This” and “The Innovators Dilemma” and as the days darkened, and my workdays elongated again, Knight’s story of triumph over problem-over-problem, filled me with hope and ambition for what’s possible with continued hard work and innovation. The proverb “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together” came to mind across this book as he recounted the story of key hires who eventually made up the executive group they called the “Buttfaces”.

December, especially in Chicago, can be the month when you hunker down, read a few books, and just start the long winter of braving the cold. Hitting 10k steps gets a hell of a lot harder. So with Emily, we kicked off our own first “Hot Chocolate” run to start the month that we’ll aim to keep up yearly whereby we start the month with a long run, followed by a good quality hot chocolate as the reward at the end! (Kilwins is proving to be an early favorite for next year). Inside in the warmth, The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon was the book to keep me thinking big. It’s a fantastic insight into the wild journey that Amazon has taken, between acquisitions, butting heads with competitors, and reinventing everything e-commerce that we take for granted today. Where some similar books are too abstract or too caught up in the details, this strikes just the right balance, offering insight into the most important tactics that helped them achieve their ‘everything store’ ambition.

To round out my year, one item on my bucket list for years has been to climb Croagh Patrick in Mayo. It’s associated with Saint Patrick, who is said to have spent forty days fasting on the summit and yearly pilgrims climb it, the most devoted of which do it barefoot. Accompanied by my friend Tyron, we braved the cold, wind, and rain, but kept shoes on our feet. It was a great way to sign off the year and echoed back to many of the principles I took from this year's books. A first journey for myself, that many others had conquered before, reaching the top felt amazing since it was my journey. We often rounded a corner, thinking the peak was upon us, only for another elevation to come into view in the distance. Unlike our climb, the climb for progress never ends and I guess that’s where the struggle, fun, excitement, and what it means to be alive lies. While I hope 2024 allows me to continue development at work and on buildaifirst.com, as I look back on this year, it’ll take AGI or whatever may be in store for us a long time to match the relationships, bonds, and new family that made up the moments that mattered in 2023.

See you in 2024!

The Stats

Number of words/phrases/paragraphs written by GPT: Zero

Number of times AI was used for generating the piece: One

• I used open-interpreter to help convert the book cover images I’d downloaded into the right size for my blog. With some back and forth, it generated a simple Python script that executed the ask perfectly.

Number of days I met my Readwise goal: 363/365

Now onto the books themselves

This was a book that was often seen around the office at Telnyx on people’s desks as it was included in employee onboarding packets. Unfortunately, I never had my own copy as it was added after I joined, but I can now understand why it got added. A fantastic book that brings you through the history of telephony, media, television, cable, and the internet, but more specifically, the innovations, politics, and titans behind it all.

Wu argues that every information industry, no matter how open and democratic in its early stages, inevitably moves towards a phase of centralization and control, akin to a ‘master switch’ that governs its fate. It dives into the history of Bell/AT&T and its regulatory capture which is all to relevant in the world of AI today. Wu uses compelling historical anecdotes and rigorous analysis to demonstrate how this pattern has repeated itself across various media platforms. Many famous names keep popping up, in addition to the cyclic nature of bundling and unbundling of content and industries. Additionally, the founding of Hollywood and the media-fication of internet businesses just before the dot-com bubble burst are stories from before my time that I loved reading about.

The book is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the forces that shape our information landscape and the potential trajectories of our digital future.

“History also shows that whatever has been closed too long is ripe for ingenuity’s assault: in time a closed industry can be opened anew, giving way to all sorts of technical possibilities and expressive uses for the medium before the effort to close the system likewise begins again.”

“Yes, Bell Labs was great. But AT&T, as an innovator, bore a serious genetic flaw: it could not originate technologies that might, by the remotest possibility, threaten the Bell system. In the language of innovation theory, the output of the Bell Labs was practically restricted to sustaining inventions; disruptive technologies, those that might even cast a shadow of uncertainty over the business model, were simply out of the question.”

“The inventor gets the experience, and the capitalist gets the invention.”

“An empire long united, must divide; an empire long divided, must unite. Thus it has ever been, and thus it will always be.”

— Tim Wu, The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires

Initially, I set out to make a list of the top textbooks on biology and microbiology. Those books ended up being much too heavy and figuratively for my standard bedtime reading so they were quickly shelved to be revisited soon. Instead, in my search for more high-level content on the same subject, “The Body: A Guide for Occupants” by Bill Bryson was on multiple lists. Bryson, who typically writes on language and travel offers a fascinating journey through the human body, offering a mix of intriguing facts, history, and science

This book presents a comprehensive exploration of the human body, from the marvels of its design to the oddities and complexities that often remain a mystery even to medical professionals. You’re guided through each part of the body, as he explains its function, significance, and the many ways it can amaze or perplex us. It’s an accessible, entertaining read for anyone curious about how our bodies work, how they fail, and how they have been understood or misunderstood throughout history. Overall, it fell short of my desire to understand more at the cellular level, but I did come away feeling like I knew a little more about everything the body offers us, and how some of the crucial breakthroughs were made. I’ll say it’s a good read for both the scientifically inclined and the casually curious.

P.S. I recently found out that a fully illustrated version is available, which I’d highly recommend if you can get your hands on one.

Don’t forget that your genes come from ancestors who most of the time weren’t even human. Some of them were fish. Lots more were tiny and furry and lived in burrows. These are the beings from whom you have inherited your body plan. You are the product of three billion years of evolutionary tweaks.

Yet as the problem has grown, the pharmaceutical industry has retreated from trying to create new antibiotics. “It’s just too expensive for them,” Kinch says. “In the 1950s, for the equivalent of a billion dollars in today’s money, you could develop about ninety drugs. Today, for the same money, you can develop on average just one-third of a drug.

A morsel of cortex one cubic millimeter in size — about the size of a grain of sand — could hold two thousand terabytes of information, enough to store all the movies ever made, trailers included, or about 1.2 billion copies of this book.

To help us deal better with this fractional lag, the brain does a truly extraordinary thing: it continuously forecasts what the world will be like a fifth of a second from now, and that is what it gives us as the present. That means that we never see the world as it is at this very instant, but rather as it will be a fraction of a moment in the future. We spend our whole lives, in other words, living in a world that doesn’t quite exist yet.

In an experiment at Stanford Hospital in California, clinicians were encouraged to reduce orders for red blood cell transfusions except when absolutely required. In five years, transfusions at the hospital fell by a quarter. The result was not only a $1.6 million saving in costs but fewer deaths, quicker average discharges, and a reduction in posttreatment complications.

“In principle, it’s really pretty simple,” he says. “We should eat less added sugar, less refined grain, and more vegetables. It’s essentially a question of trying to eat mostly good things and avoiding mostly bad things. You don’t need a PhD for that.”

Curiously, it was found that if they live alone or don’t see a child at least once a week, the telomere length advantage vanishes. It is an extraordinary fact that having good and loving relationships physically alters your DNA. Conversely, a 2010 U.S. study found, not having such relationships doubles your risk of dying from any cause.

— Bill Bryson, The Body: A Guide for Occupants

Definitely in my top three books of the year, Project Hail Mary (PHM) is a fantastic tale of survival, ingenuity, and the indomitable human spirit. By the same author as The Martian, again we follow another lone intergalactic traveler who needs to pull every trick out of the bag on a critical mission to save humanity. While Ryland Grace duct tapes and engineers his way out of trouble, life on Earth is threatened by a solar dimming event. The book elegantly knits two storylines together as we learn how a high-school teacher has ended up being sent on this mission impossible to save Earth from extinction.

I’ve grown to be a huge fan of science fiction in the last few years. Like The Martian, it’s a fantastic read due to the ingenuity of the character, with a masterful blend of science, suspense, and human drama. Where the Martian movie fell down for me was that so much of the technical nuance and struggle was overlooked for the big screen, but the nitty-gritty details are back in PHM. Complex, scientific challenges are made both understandable and exciting, and with suspense built on every page, it’s a very difficult book to leave down.

While the movie version starring Ryan Gosling is probably another couple years away, this should definitely be on your list in 2024 so you can spot all the gaps when it does eventually come out!

“Believe it or not, light has momentum,” I said. “It exerts a force. If you were out in space and you turned on a flashlight, you’d get a teeny, tiny amount of thrust from it.”

But I can’t just sit around for eleven days when there’s so much work to do. How do I explain “impatience” to someone who lives seven hundred years? “Human thing,” I say. “Understand. Not actually understand, but…understand.”

— Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary

I won’t lie. As mentioned above, I got caught up in all the hype around Metformin, Ozempic, etc. from listening to too many of the All In and Huberman Labs podcasts. I half-jokingly asked Emily if she’d consider writing me a prescription for Metformin one day, and her answer was a definitive no. So, partly based on that, I set out to start understanding the history of longevity research, and what the leading scientists in this space are taking themselves.

“Lifespan” by Dr. David Sinclair is certainly a book that challenges the conventional understanding of aging. A renowned Harvard genetics professor and an expert in aging and longevity, he offers a compelling narrative that combines decades of research with emerging technologies and lifestyle changes. The book is structured into three sections: Past, Present, and Future, providing a comprehensive view of the aging process, from historical perspectives to current research and future possibilities. His theory, baked by lots of references, is that aging is not an inevitable part of life but a condition that can be slowed or even reversed. With that, he suggests, rather than looking to find cures to the hundreds of other leading causes of mortality in later years, with more investment in this area, we can extend our “healthy years”. As a result, we could avoid a lot of other conditions associated with aging (cancers, heart disease, organ deterioration, etc).

If like me, you’re interested in the science of aging and the quest for longevity, this is certainly a good starting point. While some of it reads like a scientific research paper, it does offer a clear description of the leading theories of what’s believed to be occurring below the cellular level. It presents a very optimistic outlook on aging, but I will state that I’ve found other researchers who dispute his theories, so further work and proof on both sides is still outstanding.

In summary, I’ll say it’s a great read for those curious about the scientific breakthroughs that could reshape our understanding of human health and longevity. If you just want to find out what the likes of the author take daily to try and extend his own life, the last chapter offers a comprehensive breakdown of just that.

The advantages of digital storage explain why chains of nucleic acids have remained the go-to biological storage molecule for the past 4 billion years.

If the genome were a computer, the epigenome would be the software. It instructs the newly divided cells on what type of cells they should be and what they should remain, sometimes for decades, as in the case of individual brain neurons and certain immune cells.

They have also evolved to require a molecule called nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, or NAD. As we will see later, the loss of NAD as we age, and the resulting decline in sirtuin activity, is thought to be a primary reason our bodies develop diseases when we are old but not when we are young.

Here’s the important point: there are plenty of stressors that will activate longevity genes without damaging the cell, including certain types of exercise, intermittent fasting, low-protein diets, and exposure to hot and cold temperatures. That’s called hormesis.

Epigenetic noise causes the same kind of chaos. It is driven in large part by highly disruptive insults to the cell, such as broken DNA, as it was in the original survival circuit of M. superstes and in the old yeast cells that lost their fertility. And this, according to the Information Theory of Aging, is why we age.

Youth → broken DNA → genome instability → disruption of DNA packaging and gene regulation (the epigenome) → loss of cell identity → cellular senescence → disease → death.

I believe the blame lies with M. superstes and the survival circuit. The repeated shuffling of sirtuins and other epigenetic factors away from genes to sites of broken DNA, then back again, while helpful in the short term, is ultimately what causes us to age. Over time, the wrong genes come on at the wrong time and in the wrong place.

And overwhelmingly that advice comes down to eating more vegetables, legumes, and whole grains, while consuming less meat, dairy products, and sugar.

…there is one piece of advice I can offer, one surefire way to stay healthy longer, one thing you can do to maximize your lifespan right now, it’s this: eat less often.

You’ll recall that when the enzyme known as mTOR is inhibited, it forces cells to spend less energy dividing and more energy in the process of autophagy, which recycles damaged and misfolded proteins. That act of hunkering down ends up being good for prolonged vitality in every organism we’ve studied. What we’re coming to learn is that mTOR isn’t impacted only by caloric restriction. If you want to keep mTOR from being activated too much or too often, limiting your intake of amino acids is a good way to start, so inhibiting this particular longevity gene is really as simple as limiting your intake of meat and dairy.

…individuals who exercise more — the equivalent of at least a half hour of jogging five days a week — have telomeres that appear to be nearly a decade younger than those who live a more sedentary life.

Would a combination of fasting and exercise lengthen your lifespan? Absolutely. If you manage to do both these things: congratulations, you are well on your way.

…exposing your body to less-than-comfortable temperatures is another very effective way to turn on your longevity genes.

The three main longevity pathways, mtor, ampk, and sirtuins, evolved to protect the body during times of adversity by activating survival mechanisms. When they are activated, either by low-calorie or low-amino-acid diets, or by exercise, organisms become healthier, disease resistant, and longer lived. Molecules that tweak these pathways, such as rapamycin, metformin, resveratrol, and NAD boosters, can mimic the benefits of low-calorie diets and exercise and extend the lifespan of diverse organisms.

— David Sinclair, Lifespan: Why We Age — and Why We Don’t Have To

Here is where to write — easier to tell a story and craft the narrative when you know how it ends

If you like the podcasts, you’ll like this book even more. It offers a summary across Raz’s hundreds of interviews. I will say that it offers a very tidy equation for success, and can over-simplify some of the journeys taken by the entrepreneurs, in the view that only 20:20 hindsight can offer. However, it does provide a lot of insight into the considerations, fears, and insecurities that were held by top performers from Horowitz to Hastings.

The first two sections of the book were my favorite. The first digs into “The Call” or what spurs people to make the leap from safety as he calls it. Most of the stories told recounted wisened businesspeople who slowly phased their new venture into existence, ensuring that their safety net was always cast wide below should they fall. During this time, the book investigates the areas of finding a co-founder, alternative and wild forms of financing and most importantly, story-telling. The second outlines all the challenges to be faced in the section titled “The Test(s)”. This was most like a mixture of “Zero to One” and “Hacking Growth”, two of my preferred business reads. It quickly jumps from the theory of finding a side door into the market, which mirrors Theil’s famous “avoid competition” belief, to methods others have used for generating the much-needed buzz that all businesses need, from word of mouth to other methods of engineering it.

If you’ve read a couple other business books before, the net new information to be found here is probably limited, but it is a good fun read. Learning about everything from Dippin Dots to Airbnb, it’s interesting how the same methods applied with new thinking across industries can bring success.

In my situation,” he said, it was “staying at BCG that was dangerous but not scary. The danger was continuing to do something that didn’t make me happy and getting to sixty-five years old and looking back and going, ‘Oh my God, I wasted my life.’” Failing is scary. Wasting your life is dangerous.

Rather, the basic story that answers the big “why” questions is the one that creates loyal customers, finds the best investors, builds an employee culture that keeps them committed to the venture, and keeps you committed and grinding away when things get really hard and you want to give up (and you will). There are a million reasons for any one of these groups to quit or to say no. Your job is to give them one of the few reasons — to tell them the story — that gets them to keep listening and to say yes.”

“..if you’re the founder-entrepreneur starting a company, you always want to aim for monopoly, and you always want to avoid competition.” You want to be the only one directing traffic and collecting tolls across the widest moat possible.

Building buzz is about leveraging specific relationships (taste-makers, media contacts) and resources (OPM, expertise) to get your name out there in front of as many people as possible… Engineering word of mouth is about converting all that wonderful name recognition you’ve just achieved from the buzz into sales. It’s about getting your product into people’s hands so they can then put its name in the ears of all their friends… Indeed the difference between buzz and word of mouth is the difference between taking a big step toward brand awareness and then making a quantum leap toward customer acquisition and long-term fandom.

First, Horowitz told him, “what usually look like good ideas are bad ideas, and what look like bad ideas are good ideas, because the problem with good ideas is that everyone tries to do them, and as a result, there’s no value to be created there.” Second, he said, “you need to do the thing that you believe you are the best person in the world to do, where you have a unique proposition, given your story, to solve a problem.”

— Guy Raz, How I Built This: The Unexpected Paths to Success from the World’s Most Inspiring Entrepreneurs

This is one of the rare occasions where I watched the movie before having read the book. When the movie came out in 2015, it quickly shot up my all-time favorite list, still behind a few, but near enough the top. I hadn’t known it was based on a book, so I eventually got to it this year after enjoying Project Hail Mary so much. I had forgotten much of what happened, so the reading experience felt pretty close to uncovering the story afresh. Like in many cases, the book is far superior to the film, in my opinion. The details behind getting the rover moving, the oxygen tank set up and many other struggles feel much more real when you feel the struggle and engineering challenges page after page. Many of those were left behind in the big-screen script. Once I’d finished it, I re-watched the movie and re-confirmed my belief that the book is far superior. So, if you did like the movie, give the book a go if you enjoy learning more about tinkering on the red planet and all the disasters that come with it.

Mars doesn’t get as much sunlight as Earth. Only 500 to 700 watts per square meter (compared to the 1400 Earth gets).

“Yes, of course duct tape works in a near-vacuum. Duct tape works anywhere. Duct tape is magic and should be worshiped.”

But really, they did it because every human being has a basic instinct to help each other out. It might not seem that way sometimes, but it’s true.

— Andy Weir, The Martian

Tim Ferris always asks at the end of interviews what an interviewee would write on a billboard for the world if provided that opportunity. For me, one of the answers I juggle with would simply state: “Read this book — ‘A Technique for Producing Ideas’.”

First published in 1965, this book is a seminal work in creative thinking, particularly in advertising. It outlines a systematic technique for sparking creativity, challenging the notion that it’s an innate talent. Young guides you through the process of idea generation: gathering information, engaging with it, and letting it incubate subconsciously. He emphasizes that innovative ideas often emerge from recombining existing elements in new ways.

I don’t think it’ll change your life overnight, but it’s an interesting framework for creativity which can seem counterintuitive based on conventional reasoning. From consuming a wide range of information, to deliberately twisting and turning that knowledge, to allowing it breathing room, the book offers a practical tool for anyone aspiring to think creatively and generate impactful ideas in today’s innovation-driven environment.

A book that always sits on my nightstand, and frequents my Readwise favorites, it’s a great addition to any collection.

“An idea is nothing more or less than a new combination of old elements”

“In learning any art the important things to learn are, first, Principles, and second, Method. This is true of the art of producing ideas.”

— James Webb Young, A Technique for Producing Ideas

“Ready Player One” is a book I’ve frequently walked past at Open Books in Chicago but picked it up for the first time in September. I didn’t quite know what to expect, but the best way I can describe it is as a very good video game storyline brought to life. The narrative is based around a virtual reality game, but it reads true in that it would make for amazing side quests, levels, and some cool cut-scenes. Certainly a geeky book, there are probably many easter-eggs and the likes that went way over my head throughout.

Set in a dystopian 2045, it’s a captivating science fiction novel, where the world grapples with the aftermath of an energy crisis, leading to widespread social problems, poverty, and economic stagnation. In this bleak world, people find solace in a virtual reality game called the OASIS, created by the enigmatic James Halliday, who seems like a Steve Wozniak sort of guy. The story follows Wade Watts, a young gamer with no prospects, who embarks on a quest to find an Easter egg hidden in the OASIS by Halliday. The discovery of this egg comes with an immense reward: inheriting Halliday’s fortune and gaining control of the game. As Wade, who goes by his gamer tag ‘Parzival’, delves deeper into the quest, he faces formidable challenges, mainly derived from 1980s pop culture and Halliday’s own history. In addition to working against others in the OASIS, there’s a group called IOI who are the book’s villains who look to capture the vast wealth for themselves.

Another page-turner, it provides commentary on the potential directions our world could take, considering current issues like energy crises, environmental challenges, and the increasing role of virtual reality (debatable) in our lives. It’s a David versus Goliath tale, and echos for me the battle that open-source developers or small businesses face each day in going up against big tech in any new paradigm that emerges. Where the character of Wade Watts offers a compelling narrative of resilience, determination, and ingenuity, IOI can just throw unlimited resources at the same problem.

The movie for this one is quite different from the book too, leaving many of the best side stories behind, and switching out many of the detailed challenges that required pages of rulebook-like descriptions in the book itself. A long read, but another very good one that I’d recommend.

(P.S. One of my favorite quotes comes from the final pages, so it’s redacted here so as not to spoil the ending)

“Whenever I saw the sun, I reminded myself that I was looking at a star. One of over a hundred billion in our galaxy. A galaxy that was just one of billions of other galaxies in the observable universe. This helped me keep things in perspective.”

“People who live in glass houses should shut the fuck up.”

“One person can keep a secret, but not two.”

— Ernest Cline, Ready Player One

When they tell you not to judge a book by its cover, that’s 100% not what I did when I bought this one. I was browsing the non-fiction section and across the aisle, that creamy pint was glaring back at me, asking to be picked up. Signed with the name Roddy Doyle, I had to give it a go. I hadn’t read any of his work before, but frequently enjoy his contributions to the Sunday Paper Review on OTB on Newstalk. I read the back cover to be certain it’d at be at least of some interest, but either way, I was probably buying it.

This is very different from what I usually read, as you’ll know from my last couple of editions of this blog. All I’ll say is that even months later, I’m still not sure what I think of it. I don’t think I hate it, but I also don't think I love it. Would I read it again, no, but I also don’t regret reading it. Its style of writing made it a very difficult read, but once you get going you are torn between wanting to pull your hair out and throw the book out the window, and filling up your coffee to keep reading.

All I’ll say is that if you do read this, I want to speak with you.

The novel delves into the complexities of long-term friendships and the intricacies of human relationships. Set in a Dublin pub, the story unfolds around two old friends, Davy and Joe, who reunite for a night of drinking after years of separation. They each have their own stories to tell. The narrative, rich with dialogue and internal monologues, captures the tension and awkwardness between the two as they attempt to reconnect. The conversation, filled with veiled insults and one-sided ramblings (oh, the ramblings), reveals the deep-seated issues and unspoken truths of their past and present lives​​​​​.

I think the pint on the cover eloquently captures the murky blackness of the suppressed thoughts and feelings many men harbor, which sits below the whiteness of the clean veneer that is presented to the world. Moreover, it’s often over a quiet pint that the stereotypical Irish male will let slip a few personal feelings and ramblings, which is the case in this book. Each with their own tales of regret, nostalgia, and more, the character's introspection, makes for an intimate reading experience. A character-driven story, “Love” offers a reflective journey into the nature of human connections, and if it’s one that you take up and read, please call me when you finish.

“Things you make up bleed into things tha’ definitely happened. Like describin’ an event, an actual occasion. You add to it, you take things out. You forget exact details. I don’t think it’s dishonest.”

— Roddy Doyle, Love

You’ll find much better synopses than I can provide on other websites, but all I’ll say is that this is one that you have to read or re-read with the current age that we’re in. The details here contain all the value, and just like reps in the gym, the repetition of the lessons that Christensen presents, again and again, is where the value lies.

First published in 1997, its tales about disk drives and pneumatic excavators predate the bull market that has been all things tech and internet, but its lessons all still ring true, and likely will forever more. In this new age of AI, the story and S-curve pattern he outlines are unfolding before our eyes. When it comes to sustaining your place in the market, staying with the trend, or bringing new technology to market, this is a 10/10 must-read.

“In contrast, investing time and energy in your relationship with your spouse and children typically doesn’t offer that same immediate sense of achievement. Kids misbehave every day. It’s really not until 20 years down the road that you can put your hands on your hips and say, “I raised a good son or a good daughter.” You can neglect your relationship with your spouse, and on a day-to-day basis, it doesn’t seem as if things are deteriorating. People who are driven to excel have this unconscious propensity to underinvest in their families and overinvest in their careers — even though intimate and loving relationships with their families are the most powerful and enduring source of happiness.”

“disruptive technology should be framed as a marketing challenge, not a technological one.”

“First, disruptive products are simpler and cheaper; they generally promise lower margins, not greater profits. Second, disruptive technologies typically are first commercialized in emerging or insignificant markets. And third, leading firms’ most profitable customers generally don’t want, and indeed initially can’t use, products based on disruptive technologies.”

“To succeed consistently, good managers need to be skilled not just in choosing, training, and motivating the right people for the right job, but in choosing, building, and preparing the right organization for the job as well.”

“The techniques that worked so extraordinarily well when applied to sustaining technologies, however, clearly failed badly when applied to markets or applications that did not yet exist.”

“With few exceptions, the only instances in which mainstream firms have successfully established a timely position in a disruptive technology were those in which the firms’ managers set up an autonomous organization charged with building a new and independent business around the disruptive technology.”

“This is one of the innovator’s dilemmas: Blindly following the maxim that good managers should keep close to their customers can sometimes be a fatal mistake.”

“Sound managerial decisions are at the very root of their impending fall from industry leadership.”

— Clayton Christensen, The Innovator’s Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book that Will Change the Way You Do Business

“Haters gonna hate” and that’s exactly what I’m going to do here.

A book that thousands of others enjoy, this is one I feel strongly about adding to the discard pile. I think I feel so strongly about it because it had huge potential, and then spilled the bag. Exploring a world where a type of time travel has been unlocked and we’re catching it on multiple timelines, it started with the gusto of a Usain Bolt out of the blocks. It then slipped and fell a couple of times, getting back up to its previous pace. But with so many stumbles thereafter, its shoes fell off, the bib was torn, and the shorts were left on the floor, which in aggregate meant the runner didn’t finish the race and instead walked back over the starting line with its dignity in ruins.

TLDR; not for me

“Life with a cheat code isn’t life. Our existence isn’t something to be engineered or optimized for the avoidance of pain. That’s what it is to be human — the beauty and the pain, each meaningless without the other.”

“He has wondered lately if that’s all living really is — one long goodbye to those we love.”

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. — SØREN KIERKEGAARD”

“Because memory…is everything. Physically speaking, a memory is nothing but a specific combination of neurons firing together — a symphony of neural activity. But in actuality, it’s the filter between us and reality. You think you’re tasting this wine, hearing the words I’m saying, in the present, but there’s no such thing. The neural impulses from your taste buds and your ears get transmitted to your brain, which processes them and dumps them into working memory — so by the time you know you’re experiencing something, it’s already in the past. Already a memory.”

“Time is an illusion, a construct made out of human memory. There’s no such thing as the past, the present, or the future. It’s all happening now.”

— Blake Crouch, Recursion

Another book that’s been on many famous lists over the years, Shoe Dog lived up to what I expected. Phil Knight’s memoir which traces the early days of Nike, it offers a compelling look at how Knight transformed a bold idea into a global brand. It’s a tale of perseverance and devotion. One part of the backstory I hadn’t known about was Knight’s dealings in Japan to get ahold of Blue Tiger shoes. In the historical context of post-WW2, Knight eloquently details the difficulty of negotiating with Japan in the best of times, never mind the upbringings of the folks in the room who were directly impacted by the A-bomb strikes.

My one sticking point was that some of the lows were presented as end-of-the-world scenarios when in the overall context of things, they couldn’t have been so bad. Knight talks about not having a penny left for an incoming shipment from Japan but somehow has a full downpayment for his first house pages later. Overall, it’s a fascinating read for anyone interested in the journey behind one of the world’s most iconic brands.

In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few. — Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind

Let everyone else call your idea crazy… just keep going. Don’t stop. Don’t even think about stopping until you get there, and don’t give much thought to where “there” is. Whatever comes, just don’t stop.

The single easiest way to find out how you feel about someone. Say goodbye.

Leaning back in my recliner each night, staring at the ceiling, I tried to settle myself. I told myself: Life is growth. You grow or you die.

— Phil Knight, Shoe Dog

Bezos is a madman, but a smart madman. This book gives a good insight into what he did to get to #3 on the Forbes list.

‘The Everything Store’ offers a comprehensive account of the meteoric rise of Amazon and Jeff Bezos. The book details Amazon’s journey from a modest online bookstore to becoming one of the most influential and global businesses around today. Stone, a journalist who has followed Amazon and Bezos since the early days, draws from his experiences, interviews, and discussions with top Amazon executives to offer a behind-the-scenes look at the company’s development. Through that prism, we get a great look at the chaos that existed and the systems employed to try and get things under control, amongst many other things.

Amazon is certainly the tale of ambition and foresight, personified by the entrepreneurial mindset of Jeff Bezos. Whether it happened or not, Bezos’ fingers seemed to be in the details of all the early and even later developments at Amazon. He found super-talented people to run functions and quickly got rid of those if they didn’t work out. After that, he worked them all to the bone to extract maximum velocity for the business as it aimed to capitalize on many first-mover advantages. His famous phrase of “You can work long, hard or smart, but at Amazon.com you can’t choose two out of three.” certainly rings loudly throughout. With that, they were willing to abandon many initiatives (like customized jewelry) and bury many products in the Amazon graveyard.

The book covers pivotal moments in Amazon’s history, including its challenging start in the 1990s, the near collapse during the dot-com bust, and the subsequent innovations that propelled its success, such as Amazon Prime, the Kindle, and Amazon Web Services​​​​​​. What amazed me was the number of times the business seemed to be raging out of control and needed to be reeled back in, oftentimes dampening Bezos’ strongly held ambitions. My big takeaway was that, it was many of the senior leaders doing what was best, rather than what they were told, that frequently gave business units the runway and strategy to actually be successful, despite some of the wild ideas thrown at them. With that said, the larger structures that Bezos often brought back to the business after his reading breaks (as Gates does), like his 6-page memos, non-dependent pods, and more, likely created the organizational structure that helped those good leaders to succeed.

In short, I’d highly recommend this book. It seems relatively unbiased and offers a strong narrative that encapsulates the spirit of innovation and relentless pursuit of a vision. Please consider buying from a local bookstore if possible though (😂).

“..how Walmart viewed advertising and pricing as two ends on the same spectrum. ‘We spend only forty basis points on marketing. Go look at our shareholder statement,’ he said. ‘Most of that goes to newspapers to inform people about what is in our stores. The rest of our marketing dollars we pour into reducing prices. Our marketing strategy is our pricing strategy, which is everyday low pricing.’”

“If you’re not good, Jeff will chew you up and spit you out. And if you’re good, he will jump on your back and ride you into the ground.”

“An algorithm called Amabot brought about the downfall of the editorial. Amabot replaced the personable, handcrafted sections of the site with automatically generated recommendations in a standardized layout. The system handily won a series of tests and demonstrated it could sell as many products as the human editors.”

“My grandfather looked at me, and after a bit of silence, he gently and calmly said, ‘Jeff, one day you’ll understand that it’s harder to be kind than clever’.”’

“Step by Step, Ferociously. The phrase accurately captures Amazon’s guiding philosophy as well. Steady progress toward seemingly impossible goals will win the day. Setbacks are temporary. Naysayers are best ignored.”

— Brad Stone, The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon