Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and investors and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

Cumulative metrics (since 4/1/24):

• Total books read: 114
• Total blog posts published: 763

This week’s metrics:

• Books read: 1
• Blog posts published: 7

What I completed in the week ending 5/10/26 (link to the previous week’s commitments):

• Reread Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital, by the Venezuelan economist Carlota Perez. The book is a blend of a history and a framework book. It describes a way of thinking about cycles created by new technology and financial capital and analyzes the five major technology revolutions over the last 250 years and their implications for society: the industrial revolution; steam and railways; steel, electricity, and heavy engineering; oil, cars, and mass production; and information technology and telecommunications.

What I’ll do next week:

• Read a biography, autobiography, or framework book

Asks:

• No ask this week

Week three hundred nineteen was another week of learning. Looking forward to next week!

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and investors and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

Cumulative metrics (since 4/1/24):

• Total books read: 113
• Total blog posts published: 756

This week’s metrics:

• Books read: 1
• Blog posts published: 7

What I completed in the week ending 5/3/26 (link to the previous week’s commitments):

• Read More Than a Hobby, a memoir by Hobby Lobby founder David Green. Green describes his early years growing up in a financially strapped family and how he stumbled upon his love for retail in high school and never looked back. He shares his simple business and retailing principles that guided him as he turned a $600 bank loan into a home-and-craft empire with hundreds of stores and over $1.4 billion in annual revenue (as of 2005; it’s much larger now).

What I’ll do next week:

• Read a biography, autobiography, or framework book

Asks:

• No ask this week

Week three hundred eighteen was another week of learning. Looking forward to next week!

Weekly Update: Week Three Hundred Seventeen

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

Cumulative metrics (since 4/1/24):

• Total books read: 112
• Total blog posts published: 749

This week’s metrics:

• Books read: 1
• Blog posts published: 7

What I completed in the week ending 4/26/26 (link to the previous week’s commitments):

• Read Stock Market Maestros, a framework book by Clare Finley Levy that details the decision-making process of the best public-equity investors. Using years of historical buy-and-sell data, the book rates each investor in decision-making, hit rate (which is lower than I would have thought), and payoff ratio. The book then provides 41 case studies in which the investor breaks down the investment case, why it made or lost money, why they made the decisions they made, and what they learned. This book’s co-author, Lee Freeman-Shor, also wrote The Art of Execution, which was a great decision-making book for public-market investors. When I found out that Stock Market Maestros is the follow-up to that book, I immediately bought it.

What I’ll do next week:

• Read a biography, autobiography, or framework book

Asks:

• No ask this week

Week three hundred seventeen was another week of learning. Looking forward to next week!

Continuing with my new protocol, here I’m going to share content I consumed and learned from. This week, I spent time trying to understand physical AI, whether it’s the next frontier in AI, and how valuable training data sets are in training models for physical AI.

What I consumed this week and what I learned from it:

• Closing the data gap in robotics – YouTube presentation by UC Berkeley Ken Goldberg at an MIT Robotics seminar. This helped me understand the role that data plays in training models for robotics. His framing and quantification of the robot data-gap problem in hours and then 100,000 years was eye opening. His categorization of the four current ways to solve this problem was helpful too.
• NVIDIA Cosmos world foundation models for physical AI – YouTube presentation by Ming-Yu Liu at NVIDIA’s March 2026 GTC conference explaining their model for generating the photorealistic data needed to train machines and robots to navigate the real world. This helped me understand what Cosmos is and what it does.
• Introducing NVIDIA’s Cosmos world models – YouTube presentation by NVIDIA’s VP Generative AI Research, Ming-Yu Liu at NVIDIA’s March 2025 GTC conference. This is their introduction of Cosmos world models. This helped me understand how Cosmos was introduced last year and how far it’s come in a year.
• NVIDIA’s robotics research – YouTube presentation by Jim Fan, Yashraj Narang, and Yuke Zhu about NVIDIA’s latest robotics research. This video helped me understand NVIDIA’s robotics mission and how its strategy for physical AI focuses on offering three “computers” to customers to help them solve physical AI. Understanding their lab’s three pillars (AI, simulation, and compute-focused ) for solving physical AI research problems was helpful.
• Digital twins and simulations – YouTube presentation by Rev Lebaredian at NVIDIA’s 2026 GTC conference about how digital twins and simulation will help make physical AI a reality. This helped me understand why physical AI is so important to NVIDIA, what each of the three computers needed for robotics actually does, and how digital twins and simulations fit into that model.
• Intro to physical AI and robotics – YouTube presentation by Kalyan Vadrevu on what physical AI and robotics are. This is a good introduction. It helped me understand what physical AI really is and why NVIDIA things it’s the next wave of AI.

That’s what I consumed and learned from last week.

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

Cumulative metrics (since 4/1/24):

• Total books read: 111
• Total blog posts published: 742

This week’s metrics:

• Books read: 1
• Blog posts published: 7

What I completed in the week ending 4/19/26 (link to the previous week’s commitments):

• Read Warren Buffett and the Art of Stock Arbitrage, a framework book that details the less-publicized side of Warren Buffett’s operation, which generated over 81% annualized returns from 1980 to 2003 through merger arbitrage, spin-offs, and other special situations

What I’ll do next week:

• Read a biography, autobiography, or framework book

Asks:

• No ask this week

Week three hundred sixteen was another week of learning. Looking forward to next week!

Continuing with my new protocol, here I’m going to share content I consumed and learned from.

What I consumed this week and what I learned from it:

• The true cost of stock-based compensation – Interview with Kevin Koharki, associate professor of accounting. Koharki provides a thorough explanation of the true economic cost of issuing stock options, RSUs, and PSUs to employees. He walks through an example that includes actual financial statements of a public company. His point is that the true cost of issuing shares to employees and buying back shares to offset share dilution is significant and isn’t reflected in the cash flow statement or income statement. Cash flows are significantly less than investors realize, especially now, when many companies are investing heavily in AI-related capital expenditures. He highlights how Nvidia recently announced they’re changing their disclosure around stock-based compensation.
• Google CEO on capital allocation  – YouTube interview with Sundar Pichai. Great perspective on how he thinks about allocating capital to investments that won’t pay off for many years. Great insights into why Google was caught flat-footed when ChatGPT launched, how he evaluates long-term bets, and how he thinks about leading one of the world’s largest companies.
• Marginal gain learning fallacy – YouTube presentation with Justin Sung explaining how to be more productive. To stay on track and productive, you have to make micro adjustments that are directionally accurate. To make the right micro adjustments, getting feedback on them is vital. You get marginal gains only when you measure what actually matters!
• How to blow $1.3 million in 1 week – Hilarious YouTube interview with Lil Yachty, where he shares what he did when his first check from his record label cleared. This video is lighthearted but has a message embedded in it. Lil Yachty is brutally honest about various topics, acknowledges how ridiculous his early spending was, and highlights the importance of having wise people around. Clear example of making irrational decisions because he didn’t know any better (i.e., he had a mindware gap as discussed in this book).

That’s what I consumed and learned from last week.

This week, I shared the bookshelf section of this website and my habit of reading a book a week with someone. They asked why I read so much when I could use AI to give me the gist of books I’m interested in. They argued that it’s more time-efficient to leverage AI because I can cover more material faster. That argument is valid, but replacing books with AI summaries would prevent me from getting some of the biggest benefits I receive from reading books.

Here are a few reasons why I think reading long-form material like books is worthwhile for me:

• Focus – Reading is like exercising my brain’s ability to focus. Reading for an hour or two every day requires me to focus for long periods of time. My ability to focus (which, in today’s world, I consider a valuable and increasingly rare skill) has been greatly enhanced.
• Self-education – Reading is the best form of self-education for me. I get to consume the wisdom and learnings of others at a pace that I choose. The ability to self-learn anything and apply it is a superpower and can lead to outsize success.
• Spotting patterns – When I’m immersed in a book, I see patterns between it and other books I’ve read. These patterns have led to insights that I otherwise would not have found. When I consume summaries of books, I don’t spot patterns as easily.
• Stories – A lot of what I read is biographies and historical recounts. The stories are what stick with me, not the facts or the outcomes.
• Relaxing – Reading books is my default activity when I want to relax and decompress.
• Stimulation – After I finish a reading session, I always feel mentally stimulated. I’m thinking about what I read and feeling like I grew a small amount. I enjoy mental stimulation and the feeling that I’m continually growing. I don’t get that same feeling from other leisure activities.

This isn’t a comprehensive list. I enjoy reading books for lots of other reasons. But it gives you an idea why technology won’t replace (although I’m OK with it enhancing) my reading books.

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

Cumulative metrics (since 4/1/24):

• Total books read: 110
• Total blog posts published: 735

This week’s metrics:

• Books read: 1
• Blog posts published: 7

What I completed in the week ending 4/12/26 (link to the previous week’s commitments):

• Reread The Art of Execution, a framework book on the psychological mistakes that undermine investment execution and lead to poor returns. It’s grounded in seven years of real-world returns data from top fund managers deploying $25–$150 million. The author, Lee Freeman-Shor, released a sequel last month, and I wanted to brush up on the first one before reading it.

What I’ll do next week:

• Read a biography, autobiography, or framework book

Asks:

• No ask this week

Week three hundred fifteen was another week of learning. Looking forward to next week!

Continuing with my new protocol, here I’m going to share content I consumed and learned from.

What I struggled with:

• No material struggles this week

What I consumed this week and what I learned from it:

• Claude Managed Agents = office space of AI agents – YouTube interview detailing how to think about managed agents and when to use them, with detailed explanations and a demo of the Claude Console.
• Claude Managed Agents explanation – YouTube video that explains how Claude Managed Agents works and demos them. Quick, short video.
• $6M to $32B acquisition by Alphabet – YouTube interview with Gili Raanan, Founding Partner at VC firm Cyberstarts. Interesting interview where Raanan discusses his strategy for investing in early-stage cyber companies and why his unicorn hit rate has been so high. Raanan doesn’t ask about the founder’s idea at all. He invests in the person. And he invests only in people who have shown the ability to recover from setbacks.
• The Roblox economy turning devs into millionaires – YouTube interview with the Founder and CEO of Roblox, David Baszucki. Interesting interview where Baszucki describes how the Roblox platform works and how it’s really a small economy. His points about the value of the 3D data Roblox has are interesting, especially for robotics training. He explains how building AI-generated worlds is different from building interactive games. He makes a few references to parallels between YouTube and Roblox and how Roblox has a technical advantage over other game platforms.
• OpenAI’s 2029 projected growth, unique in history – YouTube interview with Michael J. Mauboussin, adjunct professor and investor. Fascinating interview where he discusses the importance of using base rates to evaluate probabilities. He shows how in 18,900 companies examined, no company the size of OpenAI has ever grown 108% compounded annually for five years, and how OpenAI’s 2029 $145B revenue projection would be a first in history. His ideas about intangible assets, AI, and expectations got me thinking.
• Secrets of investor athletes, and fear distorts reality – YouTube interview with Dr. Gio Valiante, world-renowned performance coach for professional athletes and investors. Founders of smaller funds and small investors can pivot and adapt to change faster than institutional investors, which is an edge. His thoughts on fear, motivation, and confidence were interesting. Confidence is inversely related to fear. Fear distorts our interpretation of objective reality. When you approach things from a place of fear, you see only the dangers, not the opportunities. Higher-performing investors operate at a level of optimization just like professional athletes’. I like his term “investor athletes.” Also, his point that high performers fall to the levels of their system (i.e., habits) or the culture and environment of their organization stuck with me.
• Thinking like an M&A buyer – YouTube Interview with Javier Enrile, Managing Director of M&A at TIAA. Interesting interview to understand how corporate buyers think about M&A. His thoughts on valuation and finding companies to buy caught my attention.

That’s what I consumed and learned from and struggled with last week.

I was working on a project over the past weekend using Claude, and I kept hitting my usage limit. I ended up buying more time so I could finish working on Sunday without interruption. The cost was low, $5, but as a percentage of my $20 monthly subscription, it was material (20%).

I thought about it and realized that between lost focus and productivity from hitting the usage limit repeatedly throughout the month and the likelihood that I’d keep buying à la carte time so I could keep working, the $20 plan wasn’t going to cut it. I did some rough math and realized that at 20x more usage, the $100-per-month plan is a good deal for my situation.

So, I upgraded. The product is good and brings way more value to me than $100 per month, so it’s a fair price. It might even be too cheap to be honest.

I’m looking forward to working with Claude interruption-free now!