Incisive Ventures Pre-Seed founder reading list

Pre-Seed, before you have nailed product/market fit, is typically one of the most overwhelming times for Founders. Founders are grappling with wearing many hats and lots of new tactical challenges (fundraising, tools selection, hiring, legal, etc.). You are also typically very resource-constrained and face a ton of very consequential decisions with very little information. This is a time when investors get a lot of tactical questions from founders.

While I am happy to help with tactical questions, after working with over 200 pre-seed founders as an investor, I have found that optimizing the mindset to make big decisions in an incomplete information environment is MUCH more meaningful and impactful. I will often send founders a book or two along with my favorite quotes.

Here are my top book recommendations (and one movie) to Pre-Seed founders and some favorite quotes. First and most important, the ones focusing on decision quality, incomplete information, best practice habits, and mindset. Most are not specific to start-ups. I have found it is very powerful to first focus on the “WHY?” which will lead into the “HOW?”. At the end is a list of my favorite tactical books more written explicitly for start-ups across the growth stages.

SUMMARY LIST

Thinking in bets, Annie Duke

“Even the best decision doesn’t yield the best outcome every time. There’s always an element of luck that you can’t control, and there is always information that is hidden from view. So the key to long-term success is to think in bets…” @AnnieDuke

[[quotes]] from [[Thinking in Bets]] Keywords: #Decisions “What makes a decision great is not that it has a great outcome. A great decision is the result of a good process, and that process must include an attempt to accurately represent our own state of knowledge. That state of knowledge, in turn, is some variation of “I’m not sure.” [[Stay Curious]]

Over time, those world-class poker players taught me to understand what a bet really is: a decision about an uncertain future. The implications of treating decisions as bets made it possible for me to find learning opportunities in uncertain environments. Treating decisions as bets, I discovered, helped me avoid common decision traps, learn from results in a more rational way, and keep emotions out of the process as much as possible. (Location 113)

Thinking in bets starts with recognizing that there are exactly two things that determine how our lives turn out: the quality of our decisions and luck. Learning to recognize the difference between the two is what thinking in bets is all about. (Location 132)

When we work backward from results to figure out why those things happened, we are susceptible to a variety of cognitive traps, like assuming causation when there is only a correlation, or cherry-picking data to confirm the narrative we prefer. We will pound a lot of square pegs into round holes to maintain the illusion of a tight relationship between our outcomes and our decisions. (Location 231)

Our goal is to get our reflexive minds to execute on our deliberative minds’ best intentions. (Location 278)

All the talent in the world won’t matter if a player can’t execute; avoiding common decision traps, learning from results in a rational way, and keeping emotions out of the process as much as possible. (Location 298)

The quality of our lives is the sum of decision quality plus luck. (Location 368)

But getting comfortable with “I’m not sure” is a vital step to being a better decision-maker. We have to make peace with not knowing. (Location 425)

In most of our decisions, we are not betting against another person. Rather, we are betting against all the future versions of ourselves that we are not choosing. (Location 684)

We form beliefs without vetting most of them, and maintain them even after receiving clear, corrective information. (Location 812)

Truthseeking, the desire to know the truth regardless of whether the truth aligns with the beliefs we currently hold, is not naturally supported by the way we process information. We might think of ourselves as open-minded and capable of updating our beliefs based on new information, but the research conclusively shows otherwise. Instead of altering our beliefs to fit new information, we do the opposite, altering our interpretation of that information to fit our beliefs. (Location 818)

How we form beliefs, and our inflexibility about changing our beliefs, has serious consequences because we bet on those beliefs. Every bet we make in our lives depends on our beliefs: (Location 900)

Being asked if we are willing to bet money on it makes it much more likely that we will examine our information in a less biased way, be more honest with ourselves about how sure we are of our beliefs, and be more open to updating and calibrating our beliefs. The more objective we are, the more accurate our beliefs become. And the person who wins bets over the long run is the one with the more accurate beliefs. (Location 961)

In the movie, the matrix was built to be a more comfortable version of the world. Our brains, likewise, have evolved to make our version of the world more comfortable: our beliefs are nearly always correct; favorable outcomes are the result of our skill; there are plausible reasons why unfavorable outcomes are beyond our control; and we compare favorably with our peers. We deny or at least dilute the most painful parts of the message. (Location 1657)

We don’t win bets by being in love with our own ideas. (Location 1759)

When we have a negative opinion about the person delivering the message, we close our minds to what they are saying and miss a lot of learning opportunities because of it. Likewise, when we have a positive opinion of the messenger, we tend to accept the message without much vetting. Both are bad. (Location 2144)

[W]hat are the consequences of each of my options in ten minutes? In ten months? In ten years?” (Location 2492)

Before making that decision to bet, the expert player is anticipating what they’ll do following each response, as well as how the action they take now affects their future decisions on the hand. (Location 2778)

Life, like poker, is one long game, and there are going to be a lot of losses, even after making the best possible bets. We are going to do better, and be happier, if we start by recognizing that we’ll never be sure of the future. (Location 3047)

The Obstacle is the Way, Ryan Holiday

“The obstacle in the path becomes the path. Never forget, within every obstacle is an opportunity to improve our condition.” #quotes [[The Obstacle Is The Way]]

“We forget: In life, it doesn’t matter what happens to you or where you came from. It matters what you do with what happens and what you’ve been given.” #quotes [[The Obstacle Is The Way]]

“If an emotion can’t change the condition or the situation you’re dealing with, it is likely an unhelpful emotion. Or, quite possibly, a destructive one. But it’s what I feel. Right, no one said anything about not feeling it. No one said you can’t ever cry. Forget “manliness.” If you need to take a moment, by all means, go ahead. Real strength lies in the control or, as Nassim Taleb put it, the domestication of one’s emotions, not in pretending they don’t exist.” #quotes [[The Obstacle Is The Way]]

“Where the head goes, the body follows. Perception precedes action. Right action follows the right perspective.” #quotes [[The Obstacle Is The Way]]

“The only guarantee, ever, is that things will go wrong. The only thing we can use to mitigate this is anticipation. Because the only variable we control completely is ourselves.” #quotes [[The Obstacle Is The Way]]

“It’s okay to be discouraged. It’s not okay to quit. To know you want to quit but to plant your feet and keep inching closer until you take the impenetrable fortress you’ve decided to lay siege to in your own life—that’s persistence.” #quotes [[The Obstacle Is The Way]]

“In life our first job is this, to divide and distinguish things into two categories: externals I cannot control, but the choices I make with regard to them I do control. Where will I find good and bad? In me, in my choices. —[[Epictetus]]” #quotes [[The Obstacle Is The Way]]

“We’ve all done it. Said: “I am so [overwhelmed, tired, stressed, busy, blocked, outmatched].” And then what do we do about it? Go out and party. Or treat ourselves. Or sleep in. Or wait. It feels better to ignore or pretend. But you know deep down that that isn’t going to truly make it any better. You’ve got to act. And you’ve got to start now.” #quotes [[The Obstacle Is The Way]]

“In every situation, life is asking us a question, and our actions are the answer.” #quotes [[The Obstacle Is The Way]]

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Mark Manson

“Who you are is defined by what you’re willing to struggle for.” #quotes [[The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck”]]

“You and everyone you know are going to be dead soon. And in the short amount of time between here and there, you have a limited amount of fucks to give. Very few, in fact. And if you go around giving a fuck about everything and everyone without conscious thought or choice—well, then you’re going to get fucked.” #quotes [[The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck”]]

“The desire for more positive experience is itself a negative experience. And, paradoxically, the acceptance of one’s negative experience is itself a positive experience. (p.9)” #quotes [[The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck”]]

“Everything worthwhile in life is won through surmounting the associated negative experience. Any attempt to escape the negative, to avoid it or quash it or silence it, only backfires. The avoidance of suffering is a form of suffering. The avoidance of struggle is a struggle. The denial of failure is a failure. Hiding what is shameful is itself a form of shame. Pain is an inextricable thread in the fabric of life, and to tear it out is not only impossible, but destructive: attempting to tear it out unravels everything else with it. To try to avoid pain is to give too many fucks about pain. In contrast, if you’re able to not give a fuck about the pain, you become unstoppable.” #quotes [[The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck”]]

“Life is essentially an endless series of problems. The solution to one problem is merely the creation of another.” #quotes [[The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck”]]

“To be happy we need something to solve. Happiness is therefore a form of action;” #quotes [[The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck”]]

“Don’t just sit there. Do something. The answers will follow.” #quotes [[The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck”]]

“Maturity is what happens when one learns to only give a fuck about what’s truly fuckworthy.” #quotes [[The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck”]]

“Our crisis is no longer material; it’s existential, it’s spiritual. We have so much fucking stuff and so many opportunities that we don’t even know what to give a fuck about anymore.” #quotes [[The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck”]]

“The more something threatens your identity, the more you will avoid it.” #quotes [[The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck”]]

“In my life, I have given a fuck about many people and many things. I have also not given a fuck about many people and many things. And like the road not taken, it was the fucks not given that made all the difference.” #quotes [[The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck”]]

“If you want to change how you see your problems, you have to change what you value and/or how you measure failure/success.” #quotes [[The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck”]]

“Being wrong opens us up to the possibility of change. Being wrong brings the opportunity for growth.” #quotes [[The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck”]]

“Don’t hope for a life without problems,” the panda said. “There’s no such thing. Instead, hope for a life full of good problems.” #quotes [[The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck”]]

“Because when we give too many fucks, when we choose to give a fuck about everything, then we feel as though we are perpetually entitled to feel comfortable and happy at all times, that’s when life fucks us.” #quotes [[The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck”]]

“People get addicted to feeling offended all the time because it gives them a high; being self-righteous and morally superior feels good.” #quotes [[The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck”]]

“Not giving a fuck does not mean being indifferent; it means being comfortable with being different.” #quotes [[The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck”]]

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Persig

Sometimes it’s a little better to travel than to arrive. (Location 1983)

On a cycle the frame is gone. You’re completely in contact with it all. You’re in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming. (Location 155)

Plans are deliberately indefinite, more to travel than to arrive anywhere. (Location 159)

The truth knocks on the door and you say, “Go away, I’m looking for the truth,” and so it goes away. Puzzling. (Location 175)

We’re in such a hurry most of the time we never get much chance to talk. The result is a kind of endless day-to-day shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where all the time went and sorry that it’s all gone. Now that we do have some time, and know it, I would like to use the time to talk in some depth about things that seem important. (Location 204)

The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain or in the petals of a flower. To think otherwise is to demean the Buddha—which is to demean oneself. (Location 385)

What you’ve got here, really, are two realities, one of immediate artistic appearance and one of underlying scientific explanation, and they don’t match and they don’t fit and they don’t really have much of anything to do with one another. That’s quite a situation. You might say there’s a little problem here. (Location 1028)

a study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really a miniature study of the art of rationality itself. (Location 1634)

Actually the physical labor is the smallest and easiest part of what the mechanic does. By far the greatest part of his work is careful observation and precise thinking. (Location 1851) #quotes [[Robert Persig]] [[Stay Curious]]

“The number of rational hypotheses that can explain any given phenomenon is infinite.” It pleased him never to run out of hypotheses. (Location 1918)

If the purpose of scientific method is to select from among a multitude of hypotheses, and if the number of hypotheses grows faster than experimental method can handle, then it is clear that all hypotheses can never be tested. If all hypotheses cannot be tested, then the results of any experiment are inconclusive and the entire scientific method falls short of its goal of establishing proven knowledge. (Location 1923)

Through multiplication upon multiplication of facts, information, theories and hypotheses, it is science itself that is leading mankind from single absolute truths to multiple, indeterminate, relative ones. (Location 1946)

By this he referred to Copernicus’ statement that the earth moves around the sun. Nothing changed as a result of this revolution, and yet everything changed. Or, to put it in Kantian terms, the objective world producing our sense data did not change, but our a priori concept of it was turned inside out. The effect was overwhelming. It was the acceptance of the Copernican revolution that distinguishes modern man from his medieval predecessors. (Location 2265)

He isn’t following any set of written instructions because the nature of the material at hand determines his thoughts and motions, which simultaneously change the nature of the material at hand. (Location 2810)

“You look at where you’re going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where you’ve been and a pattern seems to emerge. And if you project forward from that pattern, then sometimes you can come up with something. (Location 2835)

Like those in the valley behind us, most people stand in sight of the spiritual mountains all their lives and never enter them, being content to listen to others who have been there and thus avoid the hardships. Some travel into the mountains accompanied by experienced guides who know the best and least dangerous routes by which they arrive at their destination. Still others, inexperienced and untrusting, attempt to make their own routes. Few of these are successful, but occasionally some, by sheer will and luck and grace, do make it. Once there they become more aware than any of the others that there’s no single or fixed number of routes. There are as many routes as there are individual souls. (Location 3142)

“There are as many routes as there are individual souls.”

Schools teach you to imitate. If you don’t imitate what the teacher wants you get a bad grade. Here, in college, it was more sophisticated, of course; you were supposed to imitate the teacher in such a way as to convince the teacher you were not imitating, but taking the essence of the instruction and going ahead with it on your own. That got you A’s. Originality on the other hand could get you anything—from A to F. The whole grading system cautioned against it. (Location 3231)

Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. Then, when you’re no longer thinking ahead, each footstep isn’t just a means to an end but a unique event in itself. This (Location 3431)

“Quality is a characteristic of thought and statement that is recognized by a nonthinking process. Because definitions are a product of rigid, formal thinking, quality cannot be defined.” (Location 3468)

To the untrained eye ego-climbing and selfless climbing may appear identical. (Location 3561)

Reality is always the moment of vision before the intellectualization takes place. There is no other reality. This preintellectual reality is what Phaedrus felt he had properly identified as Quality. Since all intellectually identifiable things must emerge from this preintellectual reality, Quality is the parent, the source of all subjects and objects. (Location 4197)

The past cannot remember the past. The future can’t generate the future. The cutting edge of this instant right here and now is always nothing less than the totality of everything there is. (Location 4819)

Stuckness shouldn’t be avoided. It’s the psychic predecessor of all real understanding. (Location 4862)

You can’t live on just groovy emotions alone. You have to work with the underlying form of the universe too, the laws of nature which, when understood, can make work easier, sickness rarer and famine almost absent. On the other hand, technology based on pure dualistic reason has also been condemned because it obtains these material advantages by turning the world into a stylized garbage dump. Now’s the time to stop condemning things and come up with some answers. (Location 4980)

If you’re going to repair a motorcycle, an adequate supply of gumption is the first and most important tool. If you haven’t got that you might as well gather up all the other tools and put them away, because they won’t do you any good. (Location 5160)

You should remember that it’s peace of mind you’re after and not just a fixed machine. (Location 5369)

When you make the mistakes yourself, you at least get the benefit of some education. (Location 5375)

The real cycle you’re working on is a cycle called yourself. The machine that appears to be “out there” and the person that appears to be “in here” are not two separate things. They grow toward Quality or fall away from Quality together. (Location 5536)

Quality is what you see out of the corner of your eye, (Location 5787)

the real evil isn’t the objects of technology but the tendency of technology to isolate people into lonely attitudes of objectivity. (Location 6053)

My personal feeling is that this is how any further improvement of the world will be done: by individuals making Quality decisions and that’s all. God, I don’t want to have any more enthusiasm for big programs full of social planning for big masses of people that leave individual Quality out. These can be left alone for a while. (Location 6063)

the tendency to do what is “reasonable” even when it isn’t any good. That was the root of the whole thing. Right there. (Location 6077)

We always condemn most in others, he thought, that which we most fear in ourselves. (Location 6416)

“Is it hard?” “Not if you have the right attitudes. It’s having the right attitudes that’s hard.” (Location 7014)

Degeneracy can be fun but it’s hard to keep up as a serious lifetime occupation. (Location 7063)

Flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“Control of consciousness determines the quality of life.” #quotes [[Flow]]

“To overcome the anxieties and depressions of contemporary life, individuals must become independent of the social environment to the degree that they no longer respond exclusively in terms of its rewards and punishments. To achieve such autonomy, a person has to learn to provide rewards to herself. She has to develop the ability to find enjoyment and purpose regardless of external circumstances.” #quotes [[Flow]]

“Most enjoyable activities are not natural; they demand an effort that initially one is reluctant to make. But once the interaction starts to provide feedback to the person’s skills, it usually begins to be intrinsically rewarding.” #quotes [[Flow]]

“The best moments in our lives, are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times—although such experiences can also be enjoyable, if we have worked hard to attain them. The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.” #quotes [[Flow]]

“Of all the virtues we can learn no trait is more useful, more essential for survival, and more likely to improve the quality of life than the ability to transform adversity into an enjoyable challenge.” #quotes [[Flow]]

“Few things are sadder than encountering a person who knows exactly what he should do, yet cannot muster enough energy to do it. “He who desires but acts not,” wrote Blake with his accustomed vigor, “Breeds pestilence.” #quotes [[Flow]]

“…success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue…as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a course greater than oneself.” #quotes [[Flow]]

This is Water, David Foster Wallace

“There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?” #quotes [[this is water]]

“The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.” #quotes [[this is water]]

“If you worship money and things — if they are where you tap real meaning in life — then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already — it’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Worship power — you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart — you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on.” #quotes [[this is water]]

“Learning how to think” really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot or will not exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed.” #quotes [[this is water]]

“It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive, day in and day out.” #quotes [[this is water]]

“The most dangerous thing about an academic education is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualize stuff, to get lost in abstract thinking instead of simply paying attention to what’s going on in front of me.” #quotes [[this is water]]

“There is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshiping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.” #quotes [[this is water]]

Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Richard Bach

“Don’t believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding. Find out what you already know and you will see the way to fly.” #quotes [[Jonathan Livingston Seagull]]

“You have the freedom to be yourself, your true self, here and now, and nothing can stand in your way”.” #quotes [[Jonathan Livingston Seagull]]

“Jonathan sighed. The price of being misunderstood, he thought. They call you devil or they call you god.” #quotes [[Jonathan Livingston Seagull]]

“Overcome space, and all we have left is Here. Overcome time, and all we have left is Now.” #quotes [[Jonathan Livingston Seagull]]

We can lift ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill.” #quotes [[Jonathan Livingston Seagull]]

“The gull sees farthest who flies highest” #quotes [[Jonathan Livingston Seagull]]

AntiFragile, Nassim Taleb

“Difficulty is what wakes up the genius” #quotes [[Antifragile (highlights)]]

Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better. (Location 320)

“Trial and error is freedom.” #quotes [[Antifragile (highlights)]]

“You may never know what type of person someone is unless they are given opportunities to violate moral or ethical codes.” #quotes [[Antifragile (highlights)]]

“Suckers try to win arguments, nonsuckers try to win.” #quotes [[Antifragile (highlights)]]

“The irony of the process of thought control: the more energy you put into trying to control your ideas and what you think about, the more your ideas end up controlling you.” #quotes [[Antifragile (highlights)]]

“Abundance is harder for us to handle than scarcity.” #quotes [[Antifragile (highlights)]]

“Most humans manage to squander their free time, as free time makes them dysfunctional, lazy, and unmotivated—the busier they get, the more active they are at other tasks.” #quotes [[Antifragile (highlights)]]

“He who has never sinned is less reliable than he who has only sinned once.” #quotes [[Antifragile (highlights)]]

“Never ask anyone for their opinion, forecast, or recommendation. Just ask them what they have—or don’t have—in their portfolio.” #quotes [[Antifragile (highlights)]]

“The simpler, the better. Complications lead to multiplicative chains of unanticipated effects.” #quotes [[Antifragile (highlights)]]

“Steve Jobs: “People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.” #quotes [[Antifragile (highlights)]]

Tribe, Sebastian Junger

“Humans don’t mind hardship, in fact they thrive on it; what they mind is not feeling necessary. Modern society has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary. It’s time for that to end.” #quotes [[Tribe: Sebastian Junger]]

“human beings need three basic things in order to be content: they need to feel competent at what they do; they need to feel authentic in their lives; and they need to feel connected to others. These values are considered “intrinsic” to human happiness and far outweigh “extrinsic” values such as beauty, money and status.” #quotes [[Tribe: Sebastian Junger]]

“What would you risk dying for—and for whom—is perhaps the most profound question a person can ask themselves. The vast majority of people in modern society are able to pass their whole lives without ever having to answer that question, which is both an enormous blessing and a significant loss.” #quotes [[Tribe: Sebastian Junger]]

“How do you become an adult in a society that doesn’t ask for sacrifice? How do you become a man in a world that doesn’t require courage?” #quotes [[Tribe: Sebastian Junger]]

“When people are actively engaged in a cause their lives have more purpose… with a resulting improvement in mental health,” #quotes [[Tribe: Sebastian Junger]]

“When you throw trash on the ground, you apparently don’t see yourself as truly belonging to the world that you’re walking in.” #quotes [[Tribe: Sebastian Junger]]

Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman

“Nothing in life is as important as you think it is, while you are thinking about it” #quotes [[Thinking, Fast and Slow (highlights)]]

The mental work that produces impressions, intuitions, and many decisions goes on in silence in our mind. (Location 41)

The gorilla study illustrates two important facts about our minds: we can be blind to the obvious, and we are also blind to our blindness. (Location 334)

Intelligence is not only the ability to reason; it is also the ability to find relevant material in memory and to deploy attention when needed. (Location 713)

“act calm and kind regardless of how you feel” (Location 871)

If you care about being thought credible and intelligent, do not use complex language where simpler language will do. (Location 1017)

Jumping to conclusions is risky when the situation is unfamiliar, the stakes are high, and there is no time to collect more information. (Location 1295)

A simple rule can help: before an issue is discussed, all members of the committee should be asked to write a very brief summary of their position. This (Location 1399)

Naturally, you focus on the story rather than on the reliability of the results. (Location 1840)

our expectations about the frequency of events are distorted by the prevalence and emotional intensity of the messages to which we are exposed. (Location 2271)

“The emotional tail wags the rational dog.” (Location 2297)

Atomic Habits, James Clear

“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity.” #quotes [[Atomic Habits]]

“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” #quotes [[Atomic Habits]]

“You should be far more concerned with your current trajectory than with your current results.” #quotes [[Atomic Habits]]

“When you fall in love with the process rather than the product, you don’t have to wait to give yourself permission to be happy. You can be satisfied anytime your system is running.” #quotes [[Atomic Habits]]

“All big things come from small beginnings. The seed of every habit is a single, tiny decision. But as that decision is repeated, a habit sprouts and grows stronger. Roots entrench themselves and branches grow. The task of breaking a bad habit is like uprooting a powerful oak within us. And the task of building a good habit is like cultivating a delicate flower one day at a time.” #quotes [[Atomic Habits]]

bonus: The Matrix

“Denial is the most predictable of all human responses” #quotes [[The Matrix]]

“Choice. The problem is Choice.” #quotes [[The Matrix]]

“To deny our own impulses is to deny the very thing that makes us human.” #quotes [[The Matrix]]

“The body cannot live without the mind.” #quotes [[The Matrix]]

“I don’t like the idea that I’m not in control of my life.” #quotes [[The Matrix]]

“What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life.” #quotes [[The Matrix]]

“Do you think that’s air you’re breathing now?” #quotes [[The Matrix]]

“Remember… all I’m offering you is the truth. Nothing more.” #quotes [[The Matrix]]

“You have to let it all go, Neo – Fear, Doubt, and Disbelief. Free your mind!” #quotes [[The Matrix]]

“Neo, sooner or later you’re going to realize just as I did that there’s a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.” #quotes [[The Matrix]]

“There is no spoon.” #quotes [[The Matrix]]

“I can only show you the door, you’re the one that has to walk through it.” #quotes [[The Matrix]]

“You take the blue pill… the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill… you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.” #quotes [[The Matrix]]

the basics of startups, more tactical, of what and how of a start up must read

Blue Ocean Strategy

“Value innovation is the cornerstone of blue ocean strategy. We call it value innovation because instead of focusing on beating the competition, you focus on making the competition irrelevant by creating a leap in value for buyers and your company, thereby opening up new and uncontested market space.” #quotes [[Blue Ocean Strategy]]

“While good strategy content is based on a compelling value proposition for buyers with a robust profit proposition for the organization, sustainable strategy execution is based largely on a motivating-people proposition.” #quotes [[Blue Ocean Strategy]]

“Value innovation requires companies to orient the whole system toward achieving a leap in value for both buyers and themselves.” #quotes [[Blue Ocean Strategy]]

“Simply put, there is no substitute for meeting and listening to dissatisfied customers directly.” #quotes [[Blue Ocean Strategy]]

“stop looking to the competition. Value-innovate and let the competition worry about you.” #quotes [[Blue Ocean Strategy]]

“Create. Don’t Compete.” #quotes [[Blue Ocean Strategy]]

The Lean Startup

The Founders Dilemmas

The Art of Startup Fundraising

The Innovators Dilemma

Everything by Paul Graham

Zero to One

The Hard Thing about Hard Things

Good to Great

“Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice.”