He was an early investor in Apple and AOL, and he’s still at it. “New York magazine is celebrating its 50th anniversary next week,” he points out. “I’ll be one of two people attending who was there when it opened.” | learn more
How Intuit reinvents itself.
(Corporations are people too, right?). I’ve thrown shade (as the kids say) at Intuit for a long time, but really – it’s a company I love to hate because they’re excellent. Their products for SMB truly are best in class. They always seem to be pushing forward, and this article in Fortune explains how they do it. | learn more
How Israel went nuclear.
The late Shimon Peres, former President of Israel, tells the story of how he helped Israel develop (with France’s help) it’s nuclear power capabilities. This is a cool behind-the-scenes look at big scale politics. | learn more
Brad Tusk advised Uber on political strategy and got paid in stock.
His usual $25k/month fee was paid in stock, and now estimated to be worth $100MM. Now he’s become a venture capitalist with an interesting approach to getting allocation in hot tech deals. | learn more
Author caught gaming the NYT bestsellers list.
This is not the first time I’d heard of the list being gamed – it’s a rather poorly kept secret in the publishing world. This is, however, the first time I’ve seen it written up in so much detail! | learn more
Standard Chartered bank lost $400 Million on diamonds.
“How Standard Chartered became the world’s dominant diamond financier is a cautionary tale of a bank that thought it knew better than rivals, according to interviews with more than 20 people, including executives who worked at the bank and had knowledge of the loan process.” | learn more
A look inside a Chinese bitcoin mine.
“Located in a decaying industrial park on the outskirts of town, the mine employs about 50 and consists of eight single-story, warehouse-like buildings, each 150 meters (492 feet) long. Seven of them host 21,000 machines that, together, represent nearly 4% of the processing power in the global bitcoin network.” | learn more
The brothers behind Stripe: Patrick and John Collison.
This Bloomberg article was written by Elon Musk’s biographer Ashlee Vance, so you can expect it to be good. Stripe is a $9 Billion payments startup, and its founders are still in their 20s. | learn more
Tactics and lessons learned from Elon Musk’s investments.
Ready for a deep dive into Musk’s investments and how he goes about them? This is great stuff. | learn more
Claude Shannon made a roulette cheating machine.
Most people have never heard of Claude Shannon, the inventor of Information Theory. Well, many say he was as brilliant and impactful as Albert Einstein. He had a whimsical side and would invent all sorts of wacky things. This article tells the story of the device he created to beat the casinos. | learn more