6 May 2019
This week's additions focus on mindset, strategy, and founder stories, with new digests from Founders, Acquired, and StoryBrand With Donald Miller. Highlights include Why customer obsession beats competitor focus for long-term value creation Peer-to-peer ride sharing in 2012 destroyed Uber's exceptional unit economics overnight.
Showing 10 digests for 6 May 2019.
Business operating systems
Podcast
Jeff Bezos's shareholder letters: 20 years of business philosophy distilled
Founders
May 12, 2019
Business operating systems
9
Origin stories
6
Long-term thinking
5
Why customer obsession beats competitor focus for long-term value creation
Type 1 vs. type 2 decisions: most companies apply the wrong process to most choices
Failure must scale with company size — or invention stalls
How Uber went from a James Bond idea to a $82 billion IPO
Acquired
May 11, 2019
Case studies
10
Pivoting
7
Fundraising & VC
6
Peer-to-peer ride sharing in 2012 destroyed Uber's exceptional unit economics overnight.
Travis Kalanick's removal in 2017 followed a cascade of harassment, fraud, and cultural failure.
Uber IPO'd at a loss of $3B/year — betting on the Amazon 'infrastructure first' playbook.
Defining winning for every new hire
StoryBrand With Donald Miller
May 10, 2019
Top candidates reject offers when they can't picture winning
Define success in concrete numbers, not vague expectations
Start with revenue-generating employees, spend three minutes each
Productivity & habits
YouTube
How to create luck as a founder by moving faster
Y Combinator
May 9, 2019
Productivity & habits
8
Pivoting
7
Speed multiplies luck — faster movement creates more opportunities to win.
Brex started as a VR headset; rapid idea-cycling found the real opportunity.
Build constantly and share it — hiding work kills your luck surface area.
How to write a blog post that gets consistent organic traffic
Ahrefs
May 8, 2019
SEO
10
Copywriting
8
Content marketing
7
Organic search is the only traffic source that compounds over time.
Most bloggers pick topics for themselves, not for searchers — that's the core mistake.
Search intent determines rankings more than writing quality.
Deep work & focus
YouTube
How to build concentration: practical steps for leaders and founders
Bill Gallagher
May 8, 2019
Deep work & focus
9
Management
5
You can't tell a team to focus if you never taught them how
Distraction is a practiced skill — 12 hours a day makes you expert at it
Concentration must come before meditation, not the other way around
Resilience & grit
YouTube
Victim mentality is the biggest killer of success
StoryBrand With Donald Miller
May 8, 2019
Resilience & grit
8
Identity & self-belief
6
Playing the victim guarantees you'll never get the promotion or success.
Victims attract rescuers — and outsource all growth along with the work.
One daily reframe flips victim thinking into compounding success.
Founder interviews
YouTube
HubSpot's Brian Halligan on inbound marketing, product focus, and scaling as a founder
Y Combinator
May 8, 2019
Founder interviews
10
Content marketing
7
Pivoting
6
High churn forced HubSpot to shift from sales-led to product-led growth.
Go-to-market experience — not product — is now the key competitive edge in B2B.
Content and SEO built years ago still generate more leads than paid ads today.
Encouragement as compensation: how to motivate employees beyond pay
StoryBrand With Donald Miller
May 7, 2019
Management
9
Culture building
7
Encouragement is a formal part of compensation, not a bonus.
Track who you encourage — gaps in recognition silently hurt morale.
Public praise in front of peers has outsized motivational impact.
Identity & self-belief
YouTube
One question that instantly resolves business confusion
StoryBrand With Donald Miller
May 6, 2019
Confusion is usually chosen, not real — you already know the answer.
Two fill-in-the-blank sentences make the right action obvious.
Avoidance of discomfort, not complexity, causes most bad decisions.