💌 6 Things Thursday #28

Yo,

Here's another microdose of things I enjoyed this week--written by me, Raad—CEO of Lawtrades. If you’re here from last time, thanks! If you’re new, nice to have you!

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1/ Something I heard 🌍

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The Meaning of Life - Sam Harris (SoundCloud)

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The past is a memory, it’s a thought arising in the present. The future is merely anticipated, it’s another thought arising now. What we truly have is this moment. And we spend most of our lives forgetting this truth – repudiating it, fleeing it, overlooking it. And the horror is that we succeed. We manage to never really connect with the present moment, and find fulfillment there. Because we are continually hoping to become happy in the future; and the future never arrives.

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2/ Something I read 📚

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Every Amazon Shareholder Letter (PDF)

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I find these letters deeply inspiring. My favorite passage from 1997:

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We now know vastly more about online commerce than when Amazon.com was founded, but we still have so much to learn. Though we are optimistic, we must remain vigilant and maintain a sense of urgency. The challenges and hurdles we will face to make our long-term vision for Amazon.com a reality are several: aggressive, capable, well-funded competition; considerable growth challenges and execution risk; the risks of product and geographic expansion; and the need for large continuing investments to meet an expanding market opportunity. However, as we’ve long said, online bookselling, and online commerce in general, should prove to be a very large market, and it’s likely that a number of companies will see significant benefit. We feel good about what we’ve done, and even more excited about what we want to do.

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3/ An idea I liked

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4/ A tweet I favorited

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Quinn Murphy @qh_murphy

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Quick note: your brutal honesty? Ain't nobody asking for that.Where is you clever honesty? Your compassionate honesty? Your insightful honesty? Uplifting? Poetic? Empowering?Take your brutal honesty and go sit in the back with all the devil's advocates.

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January 25th 2018

18,793 Retweets47,436 Likes

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5/ An essay I enjoyed

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The Lesson to Unlearn

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Another truth bomb by PG. Here’s a little nugget:

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When I started advising startup founders at Y Combinator, especially young ones, I was puzzled by the way they always seemed to make things overcomplicated. How, they would ask, do you raise money? What’s the trick for making venture capitalists want to invest in you? The best way to make VCs want to invest in you, I would explain, is to actually be a good investment. Even if you could trick VCs into investing in a bad startup, you’d be tricking yourselves too. You’re investing time in the same company you’re asking them to invest money in. If it’s not a good investment, why are you even doing it?

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6/ A quote I’m pondering

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“People who are brutally honest get more satisfaction out of the brutality than out of the honesty.” — Richard J. Needham

🛸 Raad

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