“A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.”

- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self Reliance

I am trying to describe your feeling when something you read makes you think: “I know exactly what this writer is saying. I’ve felt this exact same thing too.”

How could someone…

I increasingly believe that your performance when you interact with someone on a particular occasion won’t really move the needle in affecting their impression of you.

This is an idea that’s been brewing inside of me for a while.

When you have a job interview, when you go on a date, when you’re trying to sell someone, when you meet someone for the very first time and it feels like an important moment, it is natural to feel nervous. A certain performance anxiety…

I hope they’ll like me. I hope I’ll say the right thing or won’t say the wrong…

As I sat in a cab on Saturday evening being zoomed through some blurry part of Chelsea in the recklessly competent style of the New York cab driver, my friend texted me and asked how I would define a life well-lived. I assumed correctly that she was drunk.

This question brought back memories of a class I took in my senior year at Penn called “Literature of Success,” a popular one among almost-real people getting angstily ready to begin noble consulting and finance professions — both the culmination and beginning point of their lives so far. The class offered a…

There are very few places as beautiful as the Great Lawn of Central Park on a warm late June Sunday. Washington Square Park isn’t bad either.

There is no happy calmness like that instilled by good sleep, sunlight, exercise, clean food and the company of a few good friends.

People often try too hard when saying hello. “It’s great to see you” is all you need to say and sounds truer than anything else you come up with.

Beauty is tantalizing because it is so hard to relate without distorting your original taste of it. When you experience it…

paradigm | ˈperəˌdīm |

noun

1 a typical example or pattern of something; a model:

• a worldview underlying the theories and methodology of a particular scientific subject.

Your paradigm is your ultimate competitive advantage.

There more I think about it, the more I am convinced that this is one of life’s fundamental truths.

I spend a lot of time hunting for exceptional founders and founders to be, and my conclusion is that what I am really looking for are unique paradigms.

Inevitably, these have been shaped by the sequence of events that they have lived through, sometimes as a powerful…

How often do you delude and mislead yourself?

As to what you want

What you’re good at

What you like doing

What should make you happy but doesn’t

What shouldn’t matter but does

What’s not going well

What surprisingly resonates with people

Who your friends are

Who gives you energy and who drains you

Who you can trust

What feels sustainable

What you should do less of

What makes you feel present and alive

Why you do what you do every day

Which forces have come together in creating the image you have of yourself?

*

People who both matter…

It seems compelling and ambitious to want to disrupt a big, general space, but I’ve found that the very best ideas are those with very specific, unique insights.

The one precise thing that is different. Explainable in one sentence without needing embellishment.

When markets are blue ocean these can feel really broad, i.e. Starbucks popularizing coffee or Salesforce popularizing the “cloud.” When a business is planting new flags it can afford to be broad. This type of scope can only exist once new infrastructure has been created that for a while creates a lot of new blue ocean opportunities. This…

Conviction is the rarest resource in the world.

Not money.

Not intelligence.

Not access.

Conviction.

I’ve met a lot of people who are very intelligent and have an awesome (in the literal sense) arsenal of skills and advantages at their disposal.

But that doesn’t make them dangerous, because they usually don’t know where to go with all of this. (In fact, less “intelligent” and more action-biased people tend to go further because they just go for it without asking so many questions! Like horses with blinders. Ignorance is bliss.)

A smart observer of the world notices opportunities and “markets” everywhere…