I’ve been reading and writing a lot about love and relationships, and have been disappointed with what the academic cannon has to offer on the subject. Love is perhaps the most important aspect of our lives, if not the most personally fulfilling. Why is there not an equally robust body of literature to master, as Eric Fromm puts it, “the art of loving”? I posit that this lack of inquiry is because of a lack of artifacts to study. Academic disciplines, particularly the most respected, examine ...

I’ve been reading and writing a lot about love and relationships, and have been disappointed with what the academic cannon has to offer on the subject. Love is perhaps the most important aspect of our lives, if not the most personally fulfilling. Why is there not an equally robust body of literature to master, as Eric Fromm puts it, “the art of loving”? I posit that this lack of inquiry is because of a lack of artifacts to study. Academic disciplines, particularly the most respected, examine ...

No one really knows what the future holds. At a start up, we are all taking a position on what we think it will look like, and what tools we will need. It’s an informed bet, but with any prediction there is risk. Even for the smartest futurist among us, there is always the chance that your position is wrong.Why cultureThat is why it is incredibly important that start ups be low ego, high trust environments. If someone has a thesis they want to try out, they should feel comfortable playing aro...

No one really knows what the future holds. At a start up, we are all taking a position on what we think it will look like, and what tools we will need. It’s an informed bet, but with any prediction there is risk. Even for the smartest futurist among us, there is always the chance that your position is wrong.Why cultureThat is why it is incredibly important that start ups be low ego, high trust environments. If someone has a thesis they want to try out, they should feel comfortable playing aro...

I’m at that age where it feels like all my friends are getting married. My Instagram feed is a deluge of engagement posts and the only times I will see my friends who live far away is at weddings. Everyone is asking when me and my boyfriend will get married, since it’s the hot thing to do. The question feels strange and random more than anything else. Falling in love with him so early was one of the major blessings of my life, and it’s bizarre to have the parents who told you to leave the doo...

I’m at that age where it feels like all my friends are getting married. My Instagram feed is a deluge of engagement posts and the only times I will see my friends who live far away is at weddings. Everyone is asking when me and my boyfriend will get married, since it’s the hot thing to do. The question feels strange and random more than anything else. Falling in love with him so early was one of the major blessings of my life, and it’s bizarre to have the parents who told you to leave the doo...

There are two types of builders. People who build things to prove how smart they are, and people who build things because they want to solve problems. The best builders are driven by a need to fix things from a very young age. They take things apart just to put them back together. They feel for people dealing with problems and need to figure out the solution for them. For too long, engineering has been gate kept by people who like to feel like the smartest person in the room. They use obscure...

There are two types of builders. People who build things to prove how smart they are, and people who build things because they want to solve problems. The best builders are driven by a need to fix things from a very young age. They take things apart just to put them back together. They feel for people dealing with problems and need to figure out the solution for them. For too long, engineering has been gate kept by people who like to feel like the smartest person in the room. They use obscure...

The myth of the lone genius is out, growth mindsets are in. Machines are better at intelligence, the real edge is authenticity, empathy, and understanding people. And people make mistakes.Do it again and again and againThe goal is not perfection; the mindset shift is we are taking a high number of shots on goal to score. Get your reps in, iterate, make mistakes and learn from them. Being good at something is the logical equivalent to not being bad at it. It’s knowing the mistakes you have mad...

The myth of the lone genius is out, growth mindsets are in. Machines are better at intelligence, the real edge is authenticity, empathy, and understanding people. And people make mistakes.Do it again and again and againThe goal is not perfection; the mindset shift is we are taking a high number of shots on goal to score. Get your reps in, iterate, make mistakes and learn from them. Being good at something is the logical equivalent to not being bad at it. It’s knowing the mistakes you have mad...

Some people say that the rise of AI is going to make us dumber. The narrative is when we have robots to do everything for us, we will lie idle and decay. I think these people immensely underestimate the importance of emotional intelligence. The most difficult cognitive task is to identify how you feel, removed from the reality of the situation. How you feel does not always obviously follow from what is going on around you. Sometimes your emotions clash with others emotions and they may be inc...

Some people say that the rise of AI is going to make us dumber. The narrative is when we have robots to do everything for us, we will lie idle and decay. I think these people immensely underestimate the importance of emotional intelligence. The most difficult cognitive task is to identify how you feel, removed from the reality of the situation. How you feel does not always obviously follow from what is going on around you. Sometimes your emotions clash with others emotions and they may be inc...

Harvard Students Skip Class and Still Get High Grades, Faculty Say So students at Harvard aren’t going to class, and they are still getting good grades and going on to make 6 figure salaries. I’ve been waiting for this one. This is not news to me, I swallowed that pill when I realized only a few of my fellow Stanford students actually wanted to learn. I have two trains of thought. Elite institutions are a signal and exclusive club more than a training ground. I learned a lot at Stanford and I...

Harvard Students Skip Class and Still Get High Grades, Faculty Say So students at Harvard aren’t going to class, and they are still getting good grades and going on to make 6 figure salaries. I’ve been waiting for this one. This is not news to me, I swallowed that pill when I realized only a few of my fellow Stanford students actually wanted to learn. I have two trains of thought. Elite institutions are a signal and exclusive club more than a training ground. I learned a lot at Stanford and I...

Every great civilization has a library where it keeps everything it has learned so far written down. Think the library of Alexandria, the library of congress; one lens to view human progress is building bigger and bigger libraries that hold more and more knowledge. The internet is the biggest library ever built. In the last 50 years, we digitized almost everything we had written down and made it accessible to anyone anywhere in the world. This is an incredible feat, but it gets outshone by th...

Every great civilization has a library where it keeps everything it has learned so far written down. Think the library of Alexandria, the library of congress; one lens to view human progress is building bigger and bigger libraries that hold more and more knowledge. The internet is the biggest library ever built. In the last 50 years, we digitized almost everything we had written down and made it accessible to anyone anywhere in the world. This is an incredible feat, but it gets outshone by th...