Below, I share content I consumed and learned from last week. I spent time doing general learning about a variety of topics.

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

• Colin Kaepernick on his NFL settlement – YouTube interview with former NFL quarterback turned rights activist Colin Kaepernick. His explanation for why he wasn’t able to pursue his lawsuit against the NFL in federal court and why he settled was eye-opening. His $150 million in lost wages is a staggering amount but believable for a Super Bowl quarterback. His insights on being conditioned as an athlete to be competitive and go after people who go after him, but learning to temper that for a bigger goal, caught my attention.
• Billionaire blue-collar mindset and $14B Amazon mistake – YouTube interview with investor, founder of private equity firm Carlyle Group, and owner of the MLB Baltimore Orioles David Rubenstein. His acknowledgement that he’s still afraid of failure was surprising, but I guess it’s true that only the paranoid survive. His story of turning down a 20% stake in Amazon and selling stock early that would now be worth $14B was shocking. I also found it interesting that he raised only $5 million from four investors, but it wasn’t a fund: On a deal-by-deal basis, they found deals and then went out to pitch investors to raise the funds. It was also interesting to learn that he was buying stock in publicly traded companies when he first started.  

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