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2023-12-19T13:03:55+00:00
King'ori Maina
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The Value of Deep Context in Business ∞
2018-04-27T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2018/04/deep-context-in-business/
<blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>“The most valuable asset in the software industry is the synthesis of
programming skill and <strong>deep context</strong> in the business problem domain, in
one skull.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>[…]</p>
<p>It means that programming skill in the absence of business domain knowledge is
becoming increasingly worthless.</p>
<p>Said another way, there are an ever decreasing number of software problems
that are so cut and dried that they can be tossed over a wall and implemented
in isolation of business expertise.</p>
<p>[…] The higher you move up the value chain in terms of your
business offering, the more that the variations inherent in the business
problems and technology constraints become wickedly complex.</p>
<p>[…]</p>
<p>Deep context is the state of having achieved a kind of mental fluency in some
large percentage of this immense field of micro-problems that appears in the
space between technology and a business domain. It doesn’t mean that you’ve
driven the uncertainty in a software project down to zero (once again, not
possible), but it means that you’ve travelled the territory often enough that
you’ve got a handle on the major geographical features. Every new software
project requires forging a new path through the wilderness, but having deep
context means that you know where the treacherous canyons and fast-flowing
rivers are. You can anticipate the biggest risks, and you have a grasp on the
scale of the risks you’re taking. You know how much you know, and how much you
don’t know about the journey ahead.</p>
<p>[…]</p>
<p>To give you an example, one developer I know who has attained deep context has
been working in the space of warehouses and fulfillment technologies for 10
years. He knows that you can’t ship a lawnmower via airfreight because it
contains a battery for the starter motor (and airfreight policy disallows
this). He knows that capacity planning is more predictable for Black Friday
than it is for Christmas because buying patterns are heavily impacted by day-
of-the-week, and Christmas falls on a different day of the week each year,
while Black Friday is always on a Friday. He knows hundreds of thousands of
other facts like these, each of which constitutes a micro-problem whose
solution was hard-won. It was learned out in the field, by releasing software
and watching it perform optimally or suboptimally, over and over again.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>~ <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesse-lawrence-watson/">Jesse Watson</a></p>
<p>
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King'ori Maina
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Caveats of Solving Business Problems with Software ∞
2018-04-27T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2018/04/caveats-business-problem-software/
<blockquote>
<p>The greatest misconception about software development is that it is a
separable discipline from deep analysis of the business problem. We think all
we need is an analyst who understands the business problem, a developer who
knows how to code, then they can email a few notes or a specification. “Good
to go”, right?</p>
<p>Not so much. At the outset, a business problem might appear simple, or only
somewhat complex. You might think you have a handle on all the caveats and
corner cases. But the average person who hasn’t programmed extensively doesn’t
appreciate the level of detail and explicitness that computers require to do
absolutely anything. Every behavior must be dictated with excruciating
specificity. And your plan for how users will interact with the system will
likely get thrown out and redrawn from scratch dozens of times before you have
a minimum viable product.</p>
<p>[…]</p>
<p>Most of the time is spent thinking and communicating about a virtually endless
number of micro-problems that seemingly emerge out of nowhere, and constitute
the real territory between the technology and the business problem. Part of
traversing this landscape of micro-problems is inventing, communicating, and
internalizing a plethora of named and unnamed abstractions. It is the only way
to break down the complexity so you can grapple with it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>~ <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesse-lawrence-watson/">Jesse Watson</a></p>
<p>
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King'ori Maina
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Implicit Beliefs ∞
2017-08-27T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2017/08/implicit-beliefs/
<blockquote>
<p>We all have implicit beliefs, which we cling to without even thinking about.
Well, that is why they are implicit, rather than explicit. For most part,
implicit beliefs are good: they reduce the mental load of questioning
everything and allow us to go along with our lives.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>To break those implicit beliefs is hard, and requires sound proof. We salute
those who can show our implicit beliefs to be wrong.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Before Einstein, there was implicit belief that the interval of time is
independent of frame of reference. No one talked about it, because no one
thought about it. It was just true. It required Einstein to break that belief.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
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King'ori Maina
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IQ versus RQ ∞
2017-01-21T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2017/01/iq-versus-rq/
<h3 id="differentiating-smarts-from-decision-making-skills">Differentiating Smarts from Decision-Making Skills</h3>
<blockquote>
<p>IQ measures something real, and it is associated with certain outcomes. For
example, thirteen-year-old children who scored in the top decile of the top
percent (99.9th percentile) on the math section of the SAT were eighteen times
more likely to earn a doctorate degree in math or science than children who
scored in the bottom decile of the top percent (99.1st percentile).</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>RQ is the ability to think rationally and, as a consequence, to make good
decisions. Whereas we generally think of intelligence and rationality as going
together, Stanovich’s work shows that the correlation coefficient between IQ
and RQ is relatively low at .20 to .35. <strong>IQ tests are not designed to capture
the thinking that leads to judicious decisions</strong>.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Stanovich laments that almost <strong>all societies are focused on intelligence when
the costs of irrational behavior are so high</strong>. But you can pick out the
signatures of rational thinking if you are alert to them. According to
Stanovich, they include adaptive behavioral acts, efficient behavioral
regulation, sensible goal prioritization, reflectivity, and the proper
treatment of evidence.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Your SAT scores shed little light on any of these qualities. So the first
lesson in assessing your own decisions or those of others is to consider IQ
and RQ separately. Warren Buffett, chairman and chief executive officer (CEO)
of Berkshire Hathaway, equates <strong>IQ to the horsepower of an engine and RQ to
the output</strong>. We all know people who are high on IQ but average or low on RQ.
Their efficiency is poor. <strong>There are others without dazzling IQs but who
consistently make sound decisions. They are highly efficient</strong>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Emphasis mine.</p>
<p>
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King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Don't Let Your Job Title Limit Your Impact ∞
2016-12-26T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2016/12/your-job-title-isnt-your-limit/
<blockquote>
<p>I’m often asked why I joined a DevRel organization. Why am I a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_evangelism">Developer
Advocate</a>?</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>When I think of the role, Developer Advocate, I think of it being the CTO for
a project or product.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>As a Developer Advocate (CTO) my job is to understand the big picture and
leverage my technical abilities to help deliver working solutions.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>A Developer Advocate (CTO) must work across departments including Sales,
Product, and Engineering to form a customer driven feedback loop.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>A Developer Advocate (CTO) works with C level executives to explain the
business value, and can jump on a whiteboard with their engineers.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>A Developer Advocate (CTO) listens.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>A Developer Advocate (CTO) recognizes patterns across customer conversations
and distills them into actionable items the team can deliver.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>A Developer Advocate (CTO) tracks key issues, does what they can to fix them,
then follows up with the customer. This is the feedback loop.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>A Developer Advocate (CTO) is not a lone wolf and relies on a strong Product
and Engineering team to execute; completing the feedback loop.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>A Developer Advocate (CTO) is not an alias for Public Speaker. We give talks
to share a vision; and perfect it.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>If you haven’t caught on yet, there is no limit to what a Developer Advocate
(CTO) can do. Don’t let your job title limit your impact.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>~ <a href="https://twitter.com/kelseyhightower">@kelseyhightower</a></p>
<p>
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King'ori Maina
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More Success For Others Than You ∞
2016-12-24T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2016/12/more-success-for-others/
<blockquote>
<p>Most important by far: you care about the success of others more than you care
about your own success. Everyone around you needs to ultimately become better
than you.</p>
<p>That’s how you lead. The light is in front of you and you take them to the
light and then go back.</p>
<p>If all the people around you achieve more than you, then life will be good.
You don’t have to believe me. I’ve seen this happen repeatedly.</p>
<p>It doesn’t matter if they are employees, investors, friends, spouses. If you
just focus on this one principle in all of your actions then you are a leader.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'More Success For Others Than You'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2016/12/more-success-for-others/" target="_blank">↩</a>
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King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
In Life, Principles Become Outcomes ∞
2016-07-20T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2016/07/principles-become-outcomes/
<blockquote>
<p>Here is where the notion of “over-night” success comes from. Anything on an
exponential curve looks small at the beginning. When you first start a habit,
the effects are minor. However, overtime, they become major. Thus,
out-of-nowhere,someone emerges onto the scene. What you didn’t see were the
years of consistent preparation that got them there. Principles govern.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>The same holds true of the reverse. Obesity, debt, identity confusion, broken
marriages. These things are governed by principles, the compounded effect of
daily decisions.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Small things become big things, <em>always</em>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
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King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Getting Ahead Vs. Doing Well ∞
2016-02-10T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2016/02/getting-ahead-vs-doing-well/
<blockquote>
<p>I was at a fancy event the other day, and it was held in three different
rooms. All of these fancy folks were there, in fancy outfits, etc. More than
once, I heard people ask, “is this room the best room?” It wasn’t enough that
the event was fancy. It mattered that the room assigned was the fanciest one.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Class rank. The most expensive car. A ‘better’ neighborhood. A faster
marathon. More online followers. A bigger pool…</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>One unspoken objection to raising the minimum wage is that people, other
people, those people, will get paid a little more. Which might make getting
ahead a little harder. When we raise the bottom, this thinking goes, it gets
harder to move to the top.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>After a company in Seattle famously raised its lowest wage tier to $70,000,
two people (who got paid more than most of the other workers) quit, because
they felt it wasn’t fair that people who weren’t as productive as they were
were going to get a raise.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>They quit a good job, a job they liked, because other people got a raise.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>This is our culture of ‘getting ahead’ talking.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>This is the thinking that, “First class isn’t better because of the seats,
it’s better because it’s not coach.” (Several airlines have tried to launch
all-first-class seating, and all of them have stumbled.)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
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King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Great CEO's Aren't Busy ∞
2016-02-01T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2016/02/great-ceos-arent-busy/
<blockquote>
<p>I remember hearing Jack Dorsey’s now-famous quote that great CEOs are
“editors”, not “writers”. And if you start to “write” more than you “edit”,
you’ve hired the wrong person.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Your job as an executive is to edit, not write. It’s OK to write once in a
while but if you do it often there’s a fundamental problem with the team.
Every time you do something ask if you’re writing or editing and get in the
mode of editing.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Simple translation — if you start to do the work of your executive team,
you’ve hired the wrong people. They should share their decisions and strategy
with you, but you shouldn’t be creating it for them.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'Great CEO's Aren't Busy'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2016/02/great-ceos-arent-busy/" target="_blank">↩</a>
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King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
The State of Advertising ∞
2016-01-30T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2016/01/the-state-of-advertising/
<blockquote>
<p>Facebook is the only platform that lets advertisers target a mass audience
with very fine demographic precision. Google you lose the demographics.
Television, you lose the the precision.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>All advertising platforms deliver fraudulent/worthless/imaginary/bogus views.
Print has a problem with publishers making up circulation numbers. Television
has a problem with ads running while no one is watching. Radio has a massive
problem as their listener numbers have collapsed. The display ad exchanges
have tremendous problems. Mobile apps have an incredible amount of accidental
clicks which may often either be 10 year olds trying to play a game or just
outright fake. Video ad networks have a problem with ads auto-playing on
repeat that are seen and heard by no one.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Google and Facebook are about the easiest to deal with, by far.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>~ <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=AJ007">AJ007</a> on <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/news">Hacker News</a></p>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'The State of Advertising'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2016/01/the-state-of-advertising/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Your Taste Is Why Your Work Disappoints You
2015-12-07T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2015/12/your-taste-is-why-your-work-disappoints-you/
<blockquote>
<p>Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of
us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there
is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that
good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste,
the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why
your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they
quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years
of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to
have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are
still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing
you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week
you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that
you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And
I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s
gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your
way through.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>~ Ira Glass</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Getting Much Stuff Done ∞
2015-09-29T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2015/09/how-hadley-wickham-gets-so-much-stuff-done/
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadley_Wickham">Hadley Wickham</a> is best known for his development of open-source statistical
analysis software packages for R (programming language). He had this to say
about how he’s able to get so much stuff done:</p>
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li><strong>Writing</strong>. I have worked really hard to build a solid writing habit - I try
and write for 60-90 minutes every morning. It’s the first thing I do after I
get out of bed. I think writing is really helpful to me for a few reasons.
First, I often use my writing as a reference - I don’t program in C++ every
day, so I’m constantly referring to @<a href="http://adv-r.had.co.nz/Rcpp.html">Rcpp</a> every time I do. Writing also
makes me aware of gaps in my knowledge and my tools, and filling in those gaps
tends to make me more efficient at tackling new problems.</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li><strong>Reading</strong>. I read a lot. I follow about 300 blogs, and keep a pretty close
eye on the R tags on Twitter and Stack Overflow. I don’t read most things
deeply - the majority of content I only briefly skim. But this wide exposure
helps me keep up with changes in technology, interesting new programming
languages, and what others are doing with data. It’s also helpful that if when
you’re tackling a new problem you can recognise the basic name - then googling
for it will suggest possible solutions. If you don’t know the name of a
problem, it’s very hard to research it.</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li><strong>Chunking</strong>. Context-switching is expensive, so if I worked on many packages
at the same time, I’d never get anything done. Instead, at any point in time,
most of my packages are lying fallow, steadily accumulating issues and ideas
for new feature. Once a critical mass has accumulated, I’ll spend a couple of
days on the package.</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p>
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King'ori Maina
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Life From Your 20's To Your 60's
2015-08-07T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2015/08/jack-ma-life-at-20-30-40-50-60/
<p>According to Jack Ma, founder and executive chairman of the<a href="http://alibabagroup.com/en/global/home"> Alibaba Group</a>
…</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Don’t worry. Any mistake is a wonderful revenue for you.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>So I tell myself, and told my young people. Before 20 years old, be a good
student. When you do entrepreneur, just learn some experience.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Before 30 years old, follow somebody. Go to a small company. Normally in a big
company it is good to learn processing. You are a part of a big machine. But
when you go to small company you learn the passion, you learn the dreams. You
learn how to do lot of things one time. So before 30 years old, it’s not which
company you go, it’s which boss you follow. It’s very important. A good boss
teach you, differently … and before from 30 to 40 years old you have to
think very clearly … you’re working for yourself, if you really wanna be
entrepreneur.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>When you are 40 to 50 years old, you have to do all the things that you are
good at. Don’t try to jump into the new area. It’s too late. You may be
successful but the rate of dying is too big. So 40 to 50, think about … how
can focus on things that you are good at.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>But when you are 50 to 60 years old, work for the young people. Because young
people can do better than you. So rely on them, invest on them, making sure
they are good.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>So when you are over 60 years old, spend time for yourself … on the beach,
sunshine. Right? It’s too late for you to change, normally.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>But I … this is my advice to the young people. 25 years old, make enough
mistakes. Don’t worry. You fall, you stand up, you fall, you stand up. Enjoy
it, at 25 years old, enjoy the show, enjoy the show.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>~ <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Ma">Jack Ma (Ma Yun)</a></p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Sell Something People Want ∞
2015-08-06T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2015/08/sell-something-people-want/
<blockquote>
<p><strong>Pete:</strong> I’m sure there are plenty of sayings about good ideas, and how
sometimes, it’s the most obvious one right in front of your nose that ended
up being the best… But it wasn’t until we’d realized that, A., we really
weren’t as great as we thought we were, and B., that the stuff was really
tough, that we went searching around for a problem that we could really
prove to ourselves that someone would pay for. So that was really big.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>With CarrotSticks, it took us about six months to earn our first dollar.
With our second idea, it took a month and a half. And with Optimizely, we
were able to earn revenue on day one before we’d written any other code. And
that illustrates how we changed our thinking to focus on making sure we
found something people wanted before we built it.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>Aaron</strong>: …So Pete, the last thing that you just said was we needed to
make something people actually wanted, which is the model of Y Combinator.
It’s on all of our shirts. It just says, “Make something people want.” And I
think it’s a really tough idea for a lot of people to actually internalize,
because they can find things that maybe they want. “I want a puppy.” But
that might not be a startup. I think you gave me the answer. The way that
you actually figure out something that people want, that’s actually a
business. It’s that they are willing to pay for.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>Pete:</strong> That was our proxy. Because we need up building a business that
sold things to people for actual money, I think, unlike a lot of tech
startups, we had an easy proxy there for demand. It was just trying to get
someone to pay for it.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>Aaron</strong>: How long did it take for you to get someone to pay for it?</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>Pete:</strong> It was a single day, actually, with Optimizely.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>Aaron</strong>: One day?</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>Pete:</strong> Dan called a couple of agencies that he’d worked with on the Obama
campaign and just described, “This is what we are working on. Will you pay
us $1,000 a month for access to early versions of it?” And sure enough, two
of them signed up. And we earned more revenue that one day than we had the
entire preceding year with our two startups.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>Aaron</strong>: Wow! Did you have the software yet?</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>Pete:</strong> We had nothing.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>Aaron</strong>: You had nothing?</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>Pete:</strong> We had nothing.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>Aaron</strong>: So you sold a promise of future software?</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>Pete:</strong> We sold a promise of future software.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
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King'ori Maina
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The Worst Kind of Illiterate ∞
2015-05-31T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2015/05/the-worst-kind-of-illiterate/
<blockquote>
<p>The worst illiterate is the political illiterate, he doesn’t hear, doesn’t
speak, nor participates in the political events. He doesn’t know the cost of
life, the price of the bean, of the fish, of the flour, of the rent, of the
shoes and of the medicine, all depends on political decisions. The political
illiterate is so stupid that he is proud and swells his chest saying that he
hates politics. The imbecile doesn’t know that, from his political ignorance
is born the prostitute, the abandoned child, and the worst thieves of all, the
bad politician, corrupted and flunky of the national and multinational
companies.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>~ <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertolt_Brecht">Bertolt Brecht</a></p>
<p>
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</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Making A Problem Of Your Problems ∞
2015-04-09T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2015/04/making-problems-worse/
<p>Of Farnam Street quoting Andy Warhol …</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Everybody has problems, but the thing is to not make a problem about your
Problem. For example, if you have no money and you worry about it all the
time, you’ll get an ulcer and have a real problem and you still won’t have any
money because people sense when you’re desperate and nobody wants anything to
do with a desperate person. But if you don’t care about having no money, then
people will give you money because you don’t care and they’ll think it’s
nothing and give it away—make you take it. But if you have a problem about
having no money and taking money and think you can’t take it and get guilty
and want to be “independent,” then it’s a problem. Whereas if you just take
the money and act spoiled and spend it like it’s nothing, then it’s not a
problem and people keep wanting to give you more.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Debatable but there’s some truth here.</p>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'Making A Problem Of Your Problems'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2015/04/making-problems-worse/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Apple's Definition Of Success ∞
2015-03-18T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2015/03/apples-definition-of-success/
<blockquote>
<p>There’s this thing in technology, almost a disease, where the definition of
success is making the most. How many clicks did you get, how many active users
do you have, how many units did you sell? Everybody in technology seems to
want big numbers. Steve never got carried away with that. He focused on making
the best.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>That took a change in my own thinking when I came to the company [Cook left
Compaq to join Apple in 1998]. I had been in the Windows world before that,
and that world was all about making the most. It still is.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>When Apple looks at what categories to enter, we ask these kinds of questions:
What are the primary technologies behind this? What do we bring? Can we make a
significant contribution to society with this? If we can’t, and if we can’t
own the key technologies, we don’t do it. That philosophy comes directly from
him and it still very much permeates the place. I hope that it always will.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>~ Tim Cook</p>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'Apple's Definition Of Success'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2015/03/apples-definition-of-success/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
I'm Not Smart Enough ∞
2015-03-04T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2015/03/im-not-smart-enough/
<blockquote>
<p>The other day I was out with some friends. At some point in the night, a few
of their other friends, whom I’d never met before, joined us. After
introductions, we got into the typical “What do you do?”</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>At this point, I explained that I teach people how to code and build their own
web applications, “You know, like Facebook, or Pinterest.”</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>And then I got the all-too-common response:</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>“Oh. I’m not smart enough for that.” <em>::awkward laugh::</em></p>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>And this upset me, as it does every. single. time.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Why? Because most of the time it’s simply <em>not true!</em> It’s a cop-out. A (lame)
excuse.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>What often looks like “smart,” or “successful,” is really just a combination
of a bit of interest and a lot of persistence.</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'I'm Not Smart Enough'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2015/03/im-not-smart-enough/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
The Rule of 40% For a Healthy SaaS Company ∞
2015-02-11T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2015/02/the-40-percent-rule/
<blockquote>
<p>I was at a board meeting recently and heard something I’ve not heard before
from a late stage investor. He described what his firm called the 40% rule for
a healthy software company, including business SaaS companies. These are for
SaaS companies at scale – assume at least $50 million in revenue – but my
<em><a href="http://www.feld.com/archives/2015/01/illusion-product-market-fit-saas-companies.html">Illusion of Product/Market Fit</a></em> for SaaS Companies correlates nicely
with it once you hit about $1m of MRR.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>The 40% rule is that your growth rate + your profit should add up to 40%. So,
if you are growing at 20%, you should be generating a profit of 20%. If you
are growing at 40%, you should be generating a 0% profit. If you are growing
at 50%, you can lose 10%. If you are doing better than the 40% rule, that’s
awesome.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
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</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
What Are You Working On That I Don't Know About? ∞
2015-01-27T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2015/01/the-best-professional-advice/
<blockquote>
<p>It was 1996 and I was just starting work at my first job outside college. The
company: Microsoft. The product: Windows 2000. The team was Base Test, and my
boss was a guy named Terry Lahman, a lean mustachioed Dad-type who really
cared about the product and his employees. I was nervous and green and didn’t
have a clue what I was doing. Eager to please, I did everything Terry ever
asked of me, as best as a new college grad could.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>One day he came into my office, and this is what he said:</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Eric, every now and then I’m going to come into your office and ask you,
“What are you working on that I don’t know about?” You should always have
something to tell me.</p>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>I remember being surprised, which is probably why it stuck. I thought he’d be
upset if he found out I was “wasting” time on outside projects. But here he
was, telling me to do just that.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'What Are You Working On That I Don't Know About?'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2015/01/the-best-professional-advice/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
The Predicator Of Success ∞
2015-01-20T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2015/01/the-predicator-of-success/
<blockquote>
<p>There’s nothing wrong with loving what you do, of course – I just don’t think
it’s a prerequisite for starting a business or building a fulfilling career,
let alone doing great work. In fact, I think it’s disingenuous for really
successful people to put so much of the focus on love, just as it’s
disingenuous for really rich people to say money doesn’t matter. People tend
to romanticize their own motivations and histories. They value what matters to
them now, and forget what really mattered to them when they started. It’s
human nature, so it’s an easy thing to do.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>The way I see it, many great businesses and important innovations are actually
born out of frustration or even hate. Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp, the
co-founders of Uber, didn’t start their ride-sharing service because they
loved transportation or logistics. They started it because they were pissed
off that they couldn’t get a cab in San Francisco. Kalanick may love running
Uber today, but he really hated not having a way to get home. A random
brainstorming session one night in Paris turned that frustration into the seed
of a multibillion-dollar company.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>I talk to other entrepreneurs all the time, and many of their companies sprang
into existence for similar reasons—because the founder wanted something that
didn’t exist or scoped out an opportunity to do something better than it had
been done before. Love for their subject matter may or may not play a role in
their stories, but hate for the existing options, along with strong opinions
about how things could work, does and is a much better predictor of success.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'The Predicator Of Success'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2015/01/the-predicator-of-success/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
A Counter Argument To The Bazaar ∞
2015-01-06T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2015/01/generation-lost-in-the-bazaar/
<p>Thoughts from Poul-Henning Kamp’s “A Generation Lost in the Bazaar”.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>That is the sorry reality of the bazaar Raymond praised in his book: a pile of
old festering hacks, endlessly copied and pasted by a clueless generation of
IT “professionals” who wouldn’t recognize sound IT architecture if you hit
them over the head with it. It is hard to believe today, but under this
embarrassing mess lies the ruins of the beautiful cathedral of Unix,
deservedly famous for its simplicity of design, its economy of features, and
its elegance of execution. (<em>Sic transit gloria mundi</em>, etc.)</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>One of Brooks’s many excellent points is that quality happens only if somebody
has the responsibility for it, and that “somebody” can be no more than one
single person—with an exception for a dynamic duo. I am surprised that Brooks
does not cite Unix as an example of this claim, since we can pinpoint with
almost surgical precision the moment that Unix started to fragment: in the
early 1990s when AT&T spun off Unix to commercialize it, thereby robbing it of
its architects.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>More than once in recent years, others have reached the same conclusion as
Brooks. Some have tried to impose a kind of sanity, or even to lay down the
law formally in the form of technical standards, hoping to bring order and
structure to the bazaar. So far they have all failed spectacularly, because
the generation of lost dot-com <em>wunderkinder</em> in the bazaar has never seen a
cathedral and therefore cannot even imagine why you would want one in the
first place, much less what it should look like. It is a sad irony, indeed,
that those who most need to read it may find <em>The Design of Design</em> entirely
incomprehensible.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I wrote up a <a href="/articles/2013/08/cathedral-and-bazaar/">summary of “The Cathedral And The Bazaar”</a> 2 years ago.
Fascinating and brilliant read.</p>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'A Counter Argument To The Bazaar'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2015/01/generation-lost-in-the-bazaar/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Getting Distracted by Superior Technology ∞
2014-11-16T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2014/11/distracted-by-technology/
<blockquote>
<p>The technology world is filled with cases where smart and superior
alternatives exist, but their existence makes no difference because you can’t
use them. 1980s UNIX was incredibly stable compared to MS-DOS, but it was
irrelevant if you intended to use MS-DOS software. Clojure and Factor are
wonderful languages, but if you want to write iOS games then you’re better off
pretending you’ve never heard of them. Not only are they not good options for
iOS, at least not at the moment, but going so against the grain brings extra
work and headaches with it.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Words like “better,” “superior,” and “right,” are misleading. Yes, Modula-2
has a beautiful module system, but that’s negated by being a fringe language
that isn’t likely to be available from the start when exciting new hardware is
released. Erlang isn’t as theoretically beautiful as those cutting-edge
research languages, but it’s been through the forge of shipping large-scale
systems. What may look like warts upon first glance may be the result of
pragmatic choices.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>There’s much more fun to be had building things than constantly being
distracted by better technology.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'Getting Distracted by Superior Technology'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2014/11/distracted-by-technology/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
On Finishing School & The Possible Danger Of Confidence In Your Own Judgement ∞
2014-11-15T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2014/11/finishing-college-danger-own-judgment/
<p>On Aaron Swartz …</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I’ve hired a lot of very talented programmers, and one of the things I
discovered was that the people who didn’t graduate from college couldn’t
finish projects,” his father says.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>“Because when you go to college, there’s all sorts of stupid stuff you have to
do in order to get through.” “He had thousands of pages of notes about
different things,” Quinn Norton says.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>“Books he was reading, books he was writing, theories he had. He started
writing a bunch of different books. One was a novel, there were books on
social theory—he didn’t finish any of them.” “He was freed of all the
disciplining experiences of life,” Lawrence Lessig says.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>“His parents got him out of school early, which was great because it allowed
him to become somebody who wasn’t the product of puberty in a public school.
But it was bad in the sense that it gave him a confidence about his own
judgment, which is dangerous.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'On Finishing School & The Possible Danger Of Confidence In Your Own Judgement'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2014/11/finishing-college-danger-own-judgment/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Which Are The Worthwhile Problems? ∞
2014-08-13T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2014/08/worthwhile-problems/
<blockquote>
<p>The worthwhile problems are the ones you can really solve or help solve, the
ones you can really contribute something to. A problem is grand in science if
it lies before us unsolved and we see some way for us to make some headway
into it. I would advise you to take even simpler, or as you say, humbler,
problems until you find some you can really solve easily, no matter how
trivial. You will get the pleasure of success, and of helping your fellow man,
even if it is only to answer a question in the mind of a colleague less able
than you. You must not take away from yourself these pleasures because you
have some erroneous idea of what is worthwhile.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>[…]</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>No problem is too small or too trivial if we can really do something about it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.farnamstreetblog.com">Farnam Street</a> has great finds, I can’t encourage you enough to head over
there and subscribe.</p>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'Which Are The Worthwhile Problems?'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2014/08/worthwhile-problems/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Life In 24-Hour Bite-sized Chunks ∞
2014-07-14T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2014/07/life-in-24-hour-chunks/
<blockquote>
<p>In several of his speeches, Charlie Munger has referred to Sir William Osler,
the Canadian physician and co-founder of Johns Hopkins Hospital. The first to
bring medical students out of the classroom and directly into the hospital for
clinical training, he is often described as the “Father of Modern Medicine.”</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Osler was a fascinating, accomplished, and erudite man who liked to quote
Thomas Carlyle’s prescription that “Our main business is not to see what lies
dimly in the distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.”</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>As I followed up on Osler, I quickly came to his speech “A Way of Life,”
delivered to students at Yale University in 1913. True to Carlyle’s
prescription, Osler proposes that men work steadily towards success and
fulfillment in life by taking the world in strict 24-hour increments, letting
neither yesterday nor tomorrow be a worry today. (He called it “Life in day-
tight compartments.”)</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>[…]</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>While we are all fools to some extent, Osler expounds on the value of putting
one foot in front of the other and slowly progressing.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>I wish to point out a path in which the way-faring man, though a fool,
cannot err; not a system to be worked out painfully only to be discarded,
not a formal scheme, simply a habit as easy or as hard to adopt as any other
habit, good or bad … The way of life that I preach is a habit to be
acquired gradually by long and steady repetition: It is the practice of
living for the day only, and for the day’s work; Life in day-tight
compartments.</p>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'Life In 24-Hour Bite-sized Chunks'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2014/07/life-in-24-hour-chunks/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
The Problem With Smart People ∞
2014-07-04T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2014/07/problem-with-smarts/
<blockquote>
<p>But it’s not perfect. Smart people have a problem, especially (although not
only) when you put them in large groups. That problem is <strong>an ability to
convincingly rationalize nearly anything</strong>.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Everybody rationalizes. We all want the world to be a particular way, and we
all make mistakes, and we all want to be successful, and we all want to feel
good about ourselves.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>We all make decisions for emotional or intuitive reasons instead of rational
ones. Some of us admit that. Some of us think using our emotions is better
than being rational all the time. Some of us don’t.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Smart people, computer types anyway, tend to come down on the side of people
who don’t like emotions. Programmers, who do logic for a living.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Here’s the problem. Logic is a pretty powerful tool, but it only works if you
give it good input. As the famous computer science maxim says, “garbage in,
garbage out.” If you know all the constraints and weights - with perfect
precision - then you can use logic to find the perfect answer. But when you
don’t, which is always, there’s a pretty good chance your logic will lead you
very, very far astray.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Most people find this out pretty early on in life, because their logic is
imperfect and fails them often. But really, really smart computer geek types
may not ever find it out. They start off living in a bubble, they isolate
themselves because socializing is unpleasant, and, if they get a good job
straight out of school, they may never need to leave that bubble. To such
people, it may appear that logic actually works, and that they are themselves
logical creatures.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>I guess I was lucky. I accidentally co-founded what turned into a pretty
successful startup while still in school. Since I was co-running a company, I
found out pretty fast that I was wrong about things and that the world didn’t
work as expected most of the time. This was a pretty unpleasant discovery, but
I’m very glad I found it out earlier in life instead of later, because I might
have wasted even more time otherwise.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'The Problem With Smart People'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2014/07/problem-with-smarts/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Hedonic Treadmill ∞
2014-06-25T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2014/06/hedonic-treadmill/
<p>From <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill">Wikipedia</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The hedonic treadmill, also known as hedonic adaptation, is <strong>the supposed
tendency of humans to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness
despite major positive or negative events or life changes</strong>. According to
this theory, as a person makes more money, expectations and desires rise in
tandem, which results in no permanent gain in happiness. Brickman and Campbell
coined the term in their essay “Hedonic Relativism and Planning the Good
Society” (1971). During the late 1990s, the concept was modified by Michael
Eysenck, a British psychologist, to become the current “hedonic treadmill
theory” which compares the pursuit of happiness to a person on a treadmill,
who has to keep working just to stay in the same place.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
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King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Risk vs. Bravado
2014-04-23T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2014/04/risk-vs-bravado/
<blockquote>
<p>What distinguishes the risks I’m interested in from mere bravado is that they
are taken in the interest of what one is committed to, what they have defined
themselves in terms of, and what makes meaningful differences in their lives.
This is the kind of risk that is a necessary step in becoming a master at
anything.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><em>~ Hubert Dreyfus</em></p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
A Dream Deferred ∞
2014-04-23T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2014/04/deferred-dreams/
<p>What happens to a dream deferred?</p>
<p>Does it dry up<br />
like a raisin in the sun?<br />
Or fester like a sore –<br />
And then run?<br />
Does it stink like rotten meat?<br />
Or crust and sugar over –<br />
like a syrupy sweet?</p>
<p>Maybe it just sags<br />
like a heavy load.</p>
<p>Or does it explode?</p>
<p><em>~ Langston Hughes</em></p>
<p>
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</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Harnessing Brainpower ∞
2014-04-21T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2014/04/harnessing-brainpower/
<blockquote>
<p>But the idea that the culture Mr Bezos has created is so demanding and
abrasive that colleagues cannot stick it is not borne out by a look at his
executive team, many of whom have worked with him for years</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>And for all his Wall Street drive, there’s more to Mr Bezos’ mentality than a
desire to crush the competition through hard work and discounting prices.
There is also an intellectual ambition to get to the bottom of knotty problems
by the application of brainpower.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>One of Mr Bezos’ ideas is that when hiring new staff, “Amazonians” should
always pick someone smarter than themselves. That way the overall level of
intelligence at the company will keep on rising. (Apparently he has not found
anyone smart enough to replace himself yet.)</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>The focus on brainpower is seen daily in the way meetings are conducted. They
typically consist of the reading and discussion of a six-page “narrative”,
which is the distillation of an issue and a proposed solution put forward by
one of the participants.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>With narratives, arguments have to be made explicit in old-fashioned prose and
figures, presented in detail so everyone can examine the case for themselves.
So meetings often consist of people sitting and reading silently for 30
minutes, and making notes before cross-examining the author.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Former manager Dave Cotter says: “It’s a really intellectual exercise that,
once you go through it a few times, you realise how powerful it is.” Now that
he has left Amazon, Mr Cotter says he has discovered “most of the world does
not follow that kind of intellectual rigour”.</p>
</blockquote>
<hr />
<ol>
<li><a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/business-27055407">“How Amazon applied the Wall Street mindset to Hi-Tech”</a> by Charles
Miller</li>
</ol>
<p>
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</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Innovating Loneliness ∞
2014-04-17T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2014/04/innovating-loneliness/
<div class="flex-video widescreen">
<iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/70534716" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen="">
</iframe>
<p><a href="http://vimeo.com/70534716">The Innovation of Loneliness</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/shimicohen">Shimi Cohen</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>
</div>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'Innovating Loneliness'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2014/04/innovating-loneliness/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
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On Following ∞
2014-04-15T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2014/04/on-following/
<blockquote>
<p>The word copying is pejorative, so let’s just call it following. Of course
Android followed the iPhone’s lead. But what else was Google to do? It took
genius to conceive and create the original iPhone. But once it was revealed —
and especially once it hit the market — anyone with a lick of sense could see
that this was how all such devices should work. If Google had stuck to its
original design for Android, it wouldn’t have succeeded in a post-iPhone world
— it would have been Windows Mobile without the existing market share.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>The first successful implementation of a radical idea is usually and correctly
lauded as the innovator. The second is derided as an imitator. But by the time
you get to the third and fourth, the idea becomes a category.</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>~ <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gruber">John Gruber</a></p>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'On Following'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2014/04/on-following/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
The Inkspot (Saturation) Strategy ∞
2014-04-10T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2014/04/the-inkspot-strategy/
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inkspot_Strategy">According to Wikipedia</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The name of the strategy refers to the way ink spots spread on a piece of
blotting paper or tissue, starting as tiny scattered points but spreading to
cover most or all of the paper.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A <a href="http://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2014/04/the-ink-spot-strategy/">fine article by Farnam Street</a> gives a good example (excerpt) of it’s
implementation by Wal-Mart from the book <a href="http://amzn.to/1edJpCZ">‘Sam Walton: Made In America’</a> …</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Now that we were out of debt, we could really do something with our key
strategy, which was simply to put good-sized discount stores into little one-
horse towns which everybody else was ignoring. In those days, Kmart wasn’t
going to towns below 50,000, and even Gibson’s wouldn’t go to towns much
smaller than 10,000 or 12,000. We knew our formula was working even in towns
smaller than 5,000 people, and there were plenty of those towns out there for
us to expand into. When people want to simplify the Wal-Mart story, that’s
usually how they sum up the secret of our success: “Oh, they went into small
towns when nobody else would.” And a long time ago, when we were first being
noticed, a lot of folks in the industry wrote us off as a bunch of country
hicks who had stumbled onto this idea by a big accident.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>Maybe it was an accident, but that strategy wouldn’t have worked at all if
we hadn’t come up with a method for implementing it. That method was to
saturate a market area by spreading out, then filling in.</strong> In the early
growth years of discounting, a lot of national companies with distribution
systems already in place — Kmart, for example — were growing by sticking
stores all over the country. Obviously, we couldn’t support anything like
that.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>But while the big guys were leapfrogging from large city to large city, they
became so spread out and so involved in real estate and zoning laws and city
politics that they left huge pockets of business out there for us. Our growth
strategy was born out of necessity, but at least we recognized it as a
strategy pretty early on.</strong> We figured we had to build our stores so that our
distribution centers, or warehouses, could take care of them, but also so
those stores could be controlled. We wanted them within reach of our district
managers, and of ourselves here in Bentonville, so we could get out there and
look after them. <strong>Each store had to be within a day’s drive of a distribution
center.</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>We saturated northwest Arkansas. We saturated Oklahoma. We saturated Missouri.
We went from Neosho to Joplin, to Monett and Aurora, to Nevada and Belton, to
Harrisonville, and then on to Fort Scott and Olathe in Kansas — and so on.
Sometimes we would jump over an area, like when we opened store number 23 in
Ruston, Louisiana, and we didn’t have a thing in south Arkansas, which is
between us and Ruston. So then we started back - filling south Arkansas. In
those days we didn’t really plan for the future. We just felt like we could
keep rolling these stores out this way, and they would keep working, in
Tennessee, or Kansas, or Nebraska — wherever we decided to go. But we did try
to think ahead some when it came to the cities. <strong>We never planned on actually
going into the cities. What we did instead was build our stores in a ring
around a city — pretty far out — and wait for the growth to come to us.</strong> That
strategy worked practically everywhere. We started early with Tulsa, putting
stores in Broken Arrow and Sand Springs. Around Kansas City, we built in
Warrensburg, Belton, and Grandview on the Missouri side of town and in Bonner
Springs and Leavenworth across the river in Kansas. We did the same thing in
Dallas.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>This saturation strategy had all sorts of benefits beyond control and
distribution. From the very beginning, we never believed in spending much
money on advertising, and saturation helped us to save a fortune in that
department. When you move like we did from town to town in these mostly rural
areas, word of mouth gets your message out to customers pretty quickly without
much advertising.</strong> When we had seventy-five stores in Arkansas, seventy-five
in Missouri, eighty in Oklahoma, whatever, people knew who we were, and
everybody except the merchants who weren’t discounting looked forward to our
coming to their town. By doing it this way, we usually could get by with
distributing just one advertising circular a month instead of running a whole
lot of newspaper advertising. We’ve never been big advertisers, and, relative
to our size today, we still aren’t. Just like today, we became our own
competitors. In the Springfield, Missouri, area, for example, we had forty
stores within 100 miles. When Kmart finally came in there with three stores,
they had a rough time going up against our kind of strength.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>So for the most part, we just started repeating what worked, stamping out
stores cookie-cutter style.</strong> The only decision we had to make was what size
format to put in what market. We had five different store sizes—running from
about 30,000 to 60,000 square feet — and we would hardly ever pass up any
market because it was too small. I had traveled so much myself looking at
competitors in the variety store business that I had a good feel for the kind
of potential in these communities. Bud and I knew what we wanted in the way of
locations. Like so many of the ideas that have made our company work from the
beginning, we’re still more or less following this same strategy, although
today we’ve moved into some cities outright. But <strong>I think our main real
estate effort should be directed at getting out in front of expansion and
letting the population build out to us.</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Emphasis, mine.</p>
<p>Seems like a brilliant read! Doesn’t it? Well you can <a href="http://amzn.to/1edJpCZ">buy it</a>.</p>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'The Inkspot (Saturation) Strategy'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2014/04/the-inkspot-strategy/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
The Mythical 10x Engineer ∞
2014-04-10T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2014/04/mythical-10x-engineer/
<blockquote>
<p>It seems like every single company I’ve worked for, or interacted with, is
currently striving to find the “10x” engineer, the rock-star developer, the
genius game-changer software architect. Much effort and time are put toward
getting these liberators of success, with companies not only believing but
actively spreading the idea that these people exist, and they are going to get
them.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>There’s just one small problem. No one really knows what the 10x engineer
does, or looks like, or represents. Is it someone that generates ten times as
much SLOC than their peers? Do they deliver projects weeks earlier than
others? Or do they just turn a mediocre team into a passionate, kick-ass
development machine that creates products at insane speeds?</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>In this post, I’m going to argue that the problem is that we’re looking in the
wrong spot. Instead of searching for the mythical 10x engineer — and making
our current employees second guess themselves about whether or not they’re any
good—we should instead be looking on how to improve our own teams, and make
them more efficient.</p>
</blockquote>
<hr />
<ul>
<li><strong>Source lines of code (SLOC)</strong>, also known as <strong>lines of code (LOC)</strong>, is a
software metric used to measure the size of a computer program by counting the
number of lines in the text of the program’s source code. SLOC is typically
used to predict the amount of effort that will be required to develop a
program, as well as to estimate programming productivity or maintainability
once the software is produced. ~ <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_lines_of_code">from Wikipedia</a></li>
</ul>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'The Mythical 10x Engineer'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2014/04/mythical-10x-engineer/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Unplug Distractions ∞
2014-04-08T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2014/04/unplug-distractions/
<blockquote>
<p>Now, I love being on the bleeding edge, but I realized, that continuous
innovation can distract from reflection and living in the present. Have you
ever done this? You are talking with a friend or acquaintance and all of a
sudden there is a lull in the conversation, an awkward silence, and instead of
redirecting with a question, you pull out your smart phone and check twitter
and update your status? I have done this social faux pas innumerable times. Or
in moments where you used to have uninterrupted silence, do you find yourself
pulling out your phone to check your RSS feeds or play a game? Yep, guilty.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>[…]</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>With reality television and overnight internet success stories, we all desire
to be known, to be famous, but fame is a deplorable desire. Fame is a
replacement for affirmation we should be receiving from God, it is a short-
term placebo. A narcissistic pill that feeds an addiction, as one cannot shut
off the spigot of nourishing flattery derived from social media and expect to
be triumphant over the fear, the horror, of not being heard. In our struggle
to be discovered by the masses we forget to listen. It is a dichotomous life.
Drowning in the noise with our fingers on the drain, we lack the discipline to
unplug.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>To be clear, social media is not to blame for our inattention to the voice of
God, as it is just a medium that has the capacity to distract. Just as the
story of Elijah suggests, there are countless awe-inspiring diversions keeping
us from the stillness of silence and solitude. If you feel technology has
overrun your life, disconnecting you from God and those around you, the
solution is simple: each piece of technology has a switch, a on/off button
that controls the flow. And in turning off our devices we can change our
perspective, no longer controlled by technology, we find time to be creative
for His purpose and to connect with others in meaningful conversation — a body
of believers striving to bring the Kingdom of God to those around us utilizing
any medium necessary — sometimes we may even use twitter.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Interesting way of looking at it. Read <a href="https://medium.com/p/7fc50db40202">the full article</a> here.</p>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'Unplug Distractions'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2014/04/unplug-distractions/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
The Surprising Truth About Drive ∞
2014-04-04T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2014/04/truth-about-drive/
<blockquote>
<p>One, as long as the task involved only mechanical skill, bonuses worked as
they would be expected, the higher the pay the better their performance. Okay,
that makes sense. But here’s what happens. But once the task called for even
rudimentary cognitive skill a larger reward led to poorer performance. Now
this is strange - a larger reward led to poorer performance - how can that
possibly be? Now what’s interesting about this is that these folks here who
did this are all economists; two at MIT, one at the University of Chicago, one
at Carnegie Mellon - top tier of the economics profession. And they’re
reaching this conclusion that seems contrary to what a lot of us learned in
economics, which is that the higher the reward the better the performance and
they’re saying that once you get above rudimentary cognitive skill it’s the
other way around, which seems like this kind of… the idea that these rewards
don’t work that way. It seems vaguely left wing and socialist doesn’t it? It’s
this kind of weird socialist conspiracy.</p>
</blockquote>
<div class="flex-video widescreen">
<iframe width="510" height="287" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/u6XAPnuFjJc?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&autohide=1" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="">
</iframe>
</div>
<p>Read the <a href="/files/content/article/2014/04/rsa_lecture_dan_pink_transcript.pdf">entire unedited transcript of Dan Pink’s talk</a> here courtesy of
<a href="http://www.thersa.org/events">RSA Events</a>.</p>
<hr />
<ol>
<li>Learn more about the speaker, <a href="http://www.danpink.com/">Dan Pink here</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://amzn.to/1m9OU8u">Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us</a> by <a href="http://www.danpink.com/">Daniel H. Pink</a>.</li>
</ol>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'The Surprising Truth About Drive'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2014/04/truth-about-drive/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Inventing The Future ∞
2014-03-27T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2014/03/inventing-the-future/
<blockquote>
<p>But what is the future? A little card displayed in front of your eye? A little
card displayed on a watch? A slightly larger or smaller screen?</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>None of these. Consider the only way to beat entrenched competitors is to
leapfrog their technology. You can’t beat Apple by building a better iPhone
and you can’t beat Google by building a better search. You must obsolete the
old technology with something disruptive and move customers over to the new
thing while the old thing lives on. The car didn’t displace horses. TV didn’t
displace radio. The Internet didn’t displace TV. JavaScript didn’t displace
PHP.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'Inventing The Future'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2014/03/inventing-the-future/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Defining Technology ∞
2014-03-27T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2014/03/defining-technology/
<blockquote>
<ol>
<li>Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is
just a natural part of the way the world works.</li>
</ol>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<ol>
<li>Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new
and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.</li>
</ol>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<ol>
<li>Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of
things</li>
</ol>
</blockquote>
<p>~ <a href="http://amzn.to/1o3rt28">The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time</a> by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Adams">Douglas
Adams</a></p>
<hr />
<ol>
<li>From <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Salmon_of_Doubt">the book’s Wikipedia page</a>, <em>“The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the
Galaxy One Last Time is a posthumous collection of previously published and
unpublished material by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Adams">Douglas Adams</a>. It consists largely of essays about
technology and life experiences, but its major selling point is the inclusion of
the incomplete novel on which Adams was working at the time of his death, The
Salmon of Doubt (from which the collection gets its title, a reference to the
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_mythology">Irish myth</a> of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salmon_of_Knowledge">Salmon of Knowledge</a>).”</em></li>
</ol>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'Defining Technology'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2014/03/defining-technology/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
A World Of Persistent Search ∞
2014-03-22T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2014/03/continuous-search/
<blockquote>
<p>“Everything needs to be continuous and everything needs to be real time,”
Tuttle said, speaking on a panel at Gigaom’s Structure Data conference
Thursday. “What that means is there is no batch processing of data. You should
expect your users will be sending you a continuous streams of context signals.
… That should propagate through your content analysis and your rankings and
your machine learning algorithms in real time so you can always deliver
incrementally better recommendations and incrementally better results.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'A World Of Persistent Search'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2014/03/continuous-search/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Ramen Profitability ∞
2014-03-13T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2014/03/ramen-profitability/
<blockquote>
<p>Ramen profitable means a startup makes just enough to pay the founders’ living
expenses. This is a different form of profitability than startups have
traditionally aimed for. Traditional profitability means a big bet is finally
paying off, whereas the main importance of ramen profitability is that it buys
you time. [<a href="http://paulgraham.com/ramenprofitable.html#f1n">1</a>]</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>In the past, a startup would usually become profitable only after raising and
spending quite a lot of money. A company making computer hardware might not
become profitable for 5 years, during which they spent $50 million. But when
they did they might have revenues of $50 million a year. This kind of
profitability means the startup has succeeded.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Ramen profitability is the other extreme: a startup that becomes profitable
after 2 months, even though its revenues are only $3000 a month, because the
only employees are a couple 25 year old founders who can live on practically
nothing. Revenues of $3000 a month do not mean the company has succeeded. But
it does share something with the one that’s profitable in the traditional way:
they don’t need to raise money to survive.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Ramen profitability is an unfamiliar idea to most people because it only
recently became feasible. It’s still not feasible for a lot of startups; it
would not be for most biotech startups, for example; but it is for many
software startups because they’re now so cheap. For many, the only real cost
is the founders’ living expenses.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>The main significance of this type of profitability is that you’re no longer
at the mercy of investors. If you’re still losing money, then eventually
you’ll either have to raise more or shut down. Once you’re ramen profitable
this painful choice goes away. You can still raise money, but you don’t have
to do it now.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'Ramen Profitability'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2014/03/ramen-profitability/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Forget passion, focus on process ∞
2014-03-04T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2014/03/passion-vs-process/
<blockquote>
<p>The problem with the “follow your passion” chorus: We can’t all love the
products we work with. Someone has to do the jobs and sell the things that
don’t seem sexy but make the world go round.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>[…] Braintree processes credit cards. You won’t meet too many people who
claim to “love” credit card processing. Even Braintree’s Bryan Johnson admits,
“I’m not particularly passionate about payments, but I am passionate about
trying to build a good company.” Johnson gets satisfaction from making customers
happy, creating a workplace that employees enjoy, and improving “an unscrupulous
and broken industry.”</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>[…]</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>So does this mean we’re all doomed to a life of ditch digging drudgery? No.
It’s about redefining passion. Instead of working with a thing you love, think
about how to work in a way you love.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'Forget passion, focus on process'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2014/03/passion-vs-process/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Why Did She Do It That Way? ∞
2014-03-04T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2014/03/jobs-to-be-done/
<h3 id="the-jobs-to-be-done-concept">The <a href="http://jobstobedone.org/">Jobs-to-be-Done</a> Concept</h3>
<blockquote>
<p>When planning new products, companies often start by segmenting their markets
and positioning their merchandise accordingly. This segmentation involves
either dividing the market into product categories, such as function or price,
or dividing the customer base into target demographics, such as age, gender,
education, or income level.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>[…]</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>“The fact that you’re 18 to 35 years old with a college degree does not cause
“you to buy a product,” Christensen says. “It may be correlated with the
“decision, but it doesn’t cause it. We developed this idea because we wanted
“to understand what causes us to buy a product, not what’s correlated with it.
“We realized that the causal mechanism behind a purchase is, ‘Oh, I’ve got a
“job to be done.’ And it turns out that it’s really effective in allowing a
“company to build products that people want to buy.”</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>[…] there’s an important difference between determining a product’s function
and its job. “Looking at the market from the function of a product really
originates from your competitors or your own employees deciding what you
need,” he says. “Whereas the jobs-to-be-done point of view causes you to crawl
into the skin of your customer and go with her as she goes about her day,
always asking the question as she does something: Why did she do it that way?”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'Why Did She Do It That Way?'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2014/03/jobs-to-be-done/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Talent Is Persistence ∞
2014-03-02T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2014/03/talent-is-persistence/
<blockquote>
<p><strong><em>What would your advice be to the 20-year-old version of you, who’s just
starting their career?</em></strong></p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>I wish I had <a href="/articles/2013/05/nothing-is-original/">Everything Is A Remix</a> when I was younger. I wish I knew that
you can just start copying other people’s stuff and fiddling with it, and
putting stuff into it, and just sort of build from there. It’s okay to be
primitive. That’s a perfectly fine way to start making things.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><em>I wish the earlier me understood work and practice more. Just the repeated
concerted effort to get better at things. I wish I didn’t have the notions of
talent and genius I had back then. I thought, “Oh, these other people, they
just have something that I don’t have.” When really, they are just people who
work more.</em></p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><em>I wish I understood work. Work is the key to anything you want to do.</em> If you
want to play the guitar—anybody can learn to play the fucking guitar—you can
be good at it. Maybe you won’t get to be a genius but you could be good.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>You can be good enough to write good songs or make a good film or whatever.
There’s no such thing as not having enough talent to get to that level. I
mean, persistence is talent, really. Just sticking with it. Talent is not
stopping.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><em>Emphasis</em> mine.</p>
<p>I first stumbled on Kirby Ferguson’s <a href="/articles/2013/05/nothing-is-original/">“Nothing Is Original, Everything Is A
Remix”</a> last year, <a href="/articles/2013/05/nothing-is-original/">see here for some context</a>.</p>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'Talent Is Persistence'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2014/03/talent-is-persistence/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
It Just Doesn't Matter ∞
2014-03-01T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2014/03/it-doesnt-matter/
<blockquote>
<p>Today I spent a lot of time fielding questions about why we did this or that
with Campfire. Why we added certain things, why we left out others, why the UI
looks like this and not like that, etc. It’s always a blast to interact with
people who are genuinely curious (and not just there to bust balls).</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>My favorite answer to the “why?” question is always: “Because it just doesn’t
matter.” I think that statement embodies what makes a product great. Figuring
out what matters and leaving out the rest.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>[…]</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>The best designers and the best programmers aren’t the ones with the best
skills, or the nimblest fingers, or the ones who can rock and roll with
photoshop or vim, they are the ones that can determine what just doesn’t
matter. That’s where the real gains are made.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'It Just Doesn't Matter'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2014/03/it-doesnt-matter/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Work On Your Best Idea ∞
2014-02-27T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2014/02/the-best-idea/
<blockquote>
<p>Turning ambition into success is hard enough as it is. Whether you’re taking
time to work on a project on the side or you’re launching a full-time
business, it’s going to require peak personal investment. Not in terms of
working crazy hours, but of dedication and perseverance.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Why would you want to pour so much of yourself into anything less than your
best idea? Other ideas might seem more achievable or convenient, but if your
heart and mind is elsewhere it’s all for naught.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'Work On Your Best Idea'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2014/02/the-best-idea/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
3 Rules of the Obama Trauma Team ∞
2014-02-27T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2014/02/obama-trauma-team-rules/
<blockquote>
<p>Rule 1: “The war room and the meetings are for solving problems. There are
plenty of other venues where people devote their creative energies to shifting
blame.”</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Rule 2: “The ones who should be doing the talking are the people who know the
most about an issue, not the ones with the highest rank. If anyone finds
themselves sitting passively while managers and executives talk over them with
less accurate information, we have gone off the rails, and I would like to
know about it.” (Explained Dickerson later: “If you can get the managers out
of the way, the engineers will want to solve things.”)</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Rule 3: “We need to stay focused on the most urgent issues, like things that
will hurt us in the next 24–48 hours.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2166770,00.html#ixzz2uXeYc4Bh">TIME: Obama’s Trauma Team: Inside the Nightmare Launch of HealthCare.Gov</a></p>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to '3 Rules of the Obama Trauma Team'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2014/02/obama-trauma-team-rules/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Fundamentals of Investing from Warren Buffett ∞
2014-02-26T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2014/02/investing-fundamentals/
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li>You don’t need to be an expert in order to achieve satisfactory investment
returns. But if you aren’t, you must recognize your limitations and follow a
course certain to work reasonably well. Keep things simple and don’t swing
for the fences. When promised quick profits, respond with a quick “no.”</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li>Focus on the future productivity of the asset you are considering. If you
don’t feel comfortable making a rough estimate of the asset’s future
earnings, just forget it and move on. No one has the ability to evaluate
every investment possibility. But omniscience isn’t necessary; you only need
to understand the actions you undertake.</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li>If you instead focus on the prospective price change of a contemplated
purchase, you are speculating. There is nothing improper about that. I know,
however, that I am unable to speculate successfully, and I am skeptical of
those who claim sustained success at doing so. Half of all coin-flippers
will win their first toss; none of those winners has an expectation of
profit if he continues to play the game. And the fact that a given asset has
appreciated in the recent past is never a reason to buy it.</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li>With my two small investments, I thought only of what the properties would
produce and cared not at all about their daily valuations. Games are won by
players who focus on the playing field – not by those whose eyes are glued
to the scoreboard. If you can enjoy Saturdays and Sundays without looking at
stock prices, give it a try on weekdays. Forming macro opinions or listening
to the macro or market predictions of others is a waste of time. Indeed, it
is dangerous because it may blur your vision of the facts that are truly
important. (When I hear TV commentators glibly opine on what the market will
do next, I am reminded of Mickey Mantle’s scathing comment: “You don’t know
how easy this game is until you get into that broadcasting booth.”)</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p>Read <a href="http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2014/02/24/warren-buffett-berkshire-letter/">the full article</a> for the tale about his two small investments.</p>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'Fundamentals of Investing from Warren Buffett'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2014/02/investing-fundamentals/" target="_blank">↩</a>
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King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Ladders ∞
2014-02-21T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2014/02/ladders/
<blockquote>
<p><em>At some point in your career, this will become relevant:</em></p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>At the very least:</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li>Don’t pull up the ladder.</li>
<li>Acknowledge that a ladder existed.</li>
<li>Don’t mock those on the ladder after you.</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>When you can:</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li>Point out ladders to others.</li>
<li>Study some ladders.</li>
<li>Make better and more ladders.</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p>(via <a href="https://twitter.com/moleitau/status/318629398507028481">@moleitau’s tweet</a>)</p>
<p>From <a href="https://the-pastry-box-project.net/allen-tan/2013-december-17">this post</a> on the <a href="https://the-pastry-box-project.net/">Pastry Box Project</a></p>
<p>
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</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
How Much Is Enough? ∞
2013-11-17T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/11/how-much-is-enough/
<p>Thus, as you look at your future, the question should not be, “How can I become
a billionaire?” You should ask, “Where can I get Enough?”</p>
<p>~ Aaron Hillegass</p>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'How Much Is Enough?'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2013/11/how-much-is-enough/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
He Giveth More Grace
2013-11-17T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/11/he-giveth-more-grace/
<p>He giveth more grace when the burdens grow greater,<br />
He sendeth more strength when the labors increase;<br />
To added affliction He addeth His mercy;<br />
To multiplied trials, His multiplied peace.</p>
<p>When we have exhausted our store of endurance,<br />
When our strength has failed ere the day is half done,<br />
When we reach the end of our hoarded resources,<br />
Our Father’s full giving is only begun.</p>
<p>Fear not that thy need shall exceed His provision,<br />
Our God ever yearns His resources to share;<br />
Lean hard on the arm everlasting, availing;<br />
The Father both thee and thy load will upbear.</p>
<p>His love has no limit; His grace has no measure.<br />
His pow’r has no boundary known unto men;<br />
For out of His infinite riches in Jesus, He giveth, and giveth, and giveth again!</p>
<p>~ <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=annie+johnson+flint+hymns">Annie Johnson Flint</a></p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
When God Wants A Man
2013-11-16T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/11/how-god-chases/
<p>When God wants to drill a man<br />
And thrill a man<br />
And skill a man …<br />
When God wants to mould a man<br />
To play the noblest part;<br />
When He yearns with all His heart<br />
To create so great and bold a man<br />
That all the world shall praise –<br />
Watch His method, watch His ways!</p>
<p>How He ruthlessly perfects<br />
Whom He royally elects;<br />
How He hammers him and hurts him,<br />
And with mighty blows converts him<br />
Into trial shapes of clay which only God understands,<br />
While his tortured heart is crying and he lifts beseeching hands!<br />
How He bends, but never breaks,<br />
When His good He undertakes …<br />
How He uses whom He chooses<br />
And with every purpose fuses him;<br />
By every art induces him<br />
To try his splendour out –<br />
God knows what He’s about!</p>
<p>When God wants to take a man<br />
And shake a man<br />
And wake a man …<br />
When God wants to make a man<br />
To do His will;<br />
When He desires to create him large and whole …<br />
With what wisdom He prepares him!</p>
<p>How He goads and never spares him,<br />
How He whets him, and He frets him,<br />
And in poverty begets him …<br />
How He sometimes disappoints<br />
Whom He sacredly anoints,<br />
With wisdom He will hide him,<br />
Never minding what betide him;<br />
Makes him so lonely<br />
So that only God’s high messages shall reach him,<br />
So that He may surely teach him<br />
What the Hierarchy planned.</p>
<p>When God wants to name a man<br />
And fame a man<br />
And tame a man …<br />
When God wants to shame a man<br />
To do his heavenly best,<br />
When He tries the highest test<br />
That His reckoning may bring,<br />
How He reins him and restrains him<br />
So his body scarce contains him,<br />
While He fires him<br />
And inspires him!</p>
<p>He keeps him yearning,<br />
ever burning for a tantalizing goal –<br />
Lures and lacerates his soul,<br />
Sets a challenge for his spirit,<br />
Draws it higher when he’s near it,<br />
Makes a jungle, that he clear it,<br />
Makes a desert that he fear it,<br />
And subdue it if he can –<br />
So does God make a man!</p>
<p>He hurls a mountain in his path,<br />
Puts a bitter choice before him<br />
Relentlessly standing over him,<br />
“Climb, or perish” so He says …<br />
Watch His purpose, watch His ways!</p>
<p>God’s plan is wondrous kind<br />
Could we understand His mind? …<br />
Fools are they who call His blind.<br />
When his feet are torn and bleeding,<br />
Yet his spirit mounts unheeding,<br />
All his higher powers speeding,<br />
Blazing newer paths and fine,<br />
With that force that is Divine.<br />
He leaps to challenge every failure<br />
And his ardour still is sweet,<br />
And love and hope are burning<br />
Even in the presence of defeat.</p>
<p>Lo, the crisis! Lo, the shouts!<br />
That must call the leader out.<br />
When the people need salvation,<br />
Does he come to lead the nation …<br />
Then does God show His plan<br />
When the world has found - a MAN!</p>
<hr />
<ol>
<li>Formerly <a href="http://media.radiosai.org/journals/Vol_02/07April01/03_Spiritual_Blossoms/03_Reflections/nature_wants.htm">“When Nature Wants A Man”</a> by Angela Morgan. I’ve replaced
‘Nature’ as the subject with ‘God’</li>
<li>This is not the first attempt at an adaptation, and so point #1 isn’t
entirely an an original idea. Previous adaptations only consisted of a
short paragraph (bits and pieces of the whole) and did not credit <a href="http://media.radiosai.org/journals/Vol_02/07April01/03_Spiritual_Blossoms/03_Reflections/nature_wants.htm">the
source</a>. I found <a href="http://media.radiosai.org/journals/Vol_02/07April01/03_Spiritual_Blossoms/03_Reflections/nature_wants.htm">the source</a> and this is my adaptation.</li>
</ol>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
The Book Of Job: How Should The Righteous Suffer? ∞
2013-11-07T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/11/the-righteous-and-suffering/
<h3 id="purpose">Purpose</h3>
<blockquote>
<p>It is common to suggest that the purpose of the book is to answer the age -
old question, <em>“Why does God allow the righteous to suffer?”</em> That is
certainly the question Job raises, but it is worthy to note that he himself
never receives a direct answer. Nor is one given by the author, other than to
answer Satan’s challenge, <em>“Does Job fear God for nothing?”</em>. We are
privileged to know of the challenge of Satan, and that God allows Job to
suffer in answer to that challenge, but Job is never told of this. Therefore,
I suggest that the purpose of the book is:</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>To answer the question, “How should the righteous suffer?”</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>While Job’s questions and complaints often come close to charging God with
wrong, he never crosses the line and humbly submits to God when told that the
answers to his questions are beyond his ability to understand. Thus the book
shows us how the righteous should bear up under suffering (<em>“You have heard of
the perseverance of Job”</em> - Jm 5:11)</p>
</blockquote>
<h3 id="some-lessons">Some Lessons</h3>
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li><strong>The book defends the absolute glory and perfection of God</strong> - It sets
forth the theme echoed in Ps 18:3 (<em>“I will call upon the Lord, who is
worthy to be praised”</em>). God is deserving of our praise simply on the basis
of who He is, apart from the blessings He bestows. Satan denied this
(1:9-11), but Job proved him wrong (1:20-22; 2:10).</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li><strong>The question of suffering is addressed</strong> - Why do we suffer? Who or what
causes it? Why doesn’t God do something? Not all questions are answered,
but some important points are made:</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li><strong>Man is unable to subject the painful experiences of human existence to a
meaningful analysis</strong> - God’s workings are beyond man’s ability to fathom.
Man simply cannot tie all the “loose ends” of the Lord’s purposes
together. We must learn to trust in God, no matter the circumstances.</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li><strong>Suffering is not always the result of personal sin</strong> - The erroneous
conclusion drawn by Job’s friends is that suffering is always a
consequence of sin. Job proves this is not the case.</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li><strong>Suffering may be allowed as a compliment to one’s spirituality</strong> - God
allowed Job to suffer to prove to Satan what kind of man he really was.
What confidence God had in Job!</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li><strong>The book paints a beautiful picture of “patience”</strong> - The Greek word is
“hupomone”, which describes the trait of one who is able to abide under the
weight of trials. From the “patience of Job”, we learn that it means to
maintain fidelity to God, even under great trials in which we do not
understand what is happening.</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li><strong>The book also prepares the way for the coming of Jesus Christ!</strong> - His
coming is anticipated in several ways. Job longs for a mediator between him
and God (9:33; 33:23), and Jesus is one (1Ti 2:5). Job confessed his faith
in a Redeemer who would one day come (19:25); Christ is that Redeemer (Ep
1:7)!</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'The Book Of Job: How Should The Righteous Suffer?'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2013/11/the-righteous-and-suffering/" target="_blank">↩</a>
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King'ori Maina
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Smalltalk, Listening And Sharing
2013-11-04T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/11/sharing-listening-smalltalk/
<p>This <a href="http://the-pastry-box-project.net/leslie-jensen-inman/2013-october-24/">pastry</a> by <a href="http://the-pastry-box-project.net/baker/leslie-jensen-inman/">Leslie Jensen-Inman</a> got me thinking about triggering
sharing during smalltalk …</p>
<blockquote>
<p>When I travel, I always bring a book with the intention of being able to read
while waiting for the plane to arrive and while inflight. However, I rarely
get to read as much as I intend. Instead, I get into conversations with
complete strangers who tell me very personal details of their lives. For
example, on two different flights in one day, I had two separate women tell me
about their <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hysterectomy">hysterectomies</a>. I hadn’t asked anything specific that would
lead both women to share this very personal experience, but they both did.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>I shared these and other examples of stories that have been told to me with a
friend. I wondered if he had similar experiences. He clearly explained,
“People share things with you because you ask the follow-up question.”</p>
</blockquote>
<h3 id="furthering-the-smalltalk">Furthering The Smalltalk</h3>
<p>Be creative with …</p>
<ul>
<li>Yes/No questions</li>
<li>What?</li>
<li>How?</li>
<li>Why?</li>
<li>Where?</li>
<li>When?</li>
<li>Meaning?</li>
<li>And?</li>
</ul>
<p>Then simply rinse and repeat … obviously, after letting the person finish
speaking.</p>
<h3 id="listening">Listening</h3>
<ol>
<li>Make eye contact while the other person speaks. In general, you should aim
for eye contact about 60-70% of the time that you are listening. Lean toward
the other person, and nod your head occasionally. Avoid folding your arms as
this signals that you are not listening.</li>
<li>Instead of offering unsolicited advice or opinions, simply paraphrase what
has been said. You might start this off by saying “In other words, what you
are saying is…”.</li>
<li>Do not interrupt while the other person is speaking. Do not prepare your
reply while the other person speaks; the last thing that he says may change
the meaning of what he has already said.</li>
<li>In addition to listening to what is said, watch nonverbal behavior to pick up
on hidden meaning. Facial expressions, tone of voice and other behaviors can
sometimes tell you more than words alone.</li>
<li>While listening, shut down your internal dialogue. Avoid daydreaming. It is
impossible to attentively listen to someone else and your own internal voice
at the same time.</li>
<li>Show interest by asking questions to clarify what is said. Ask open-ended
questions to encourage the speaker. Avoid closed yes-or-no questions that
tend to shut down conversation.</li>
<li>Avoid abruptly changing the subject; it will appear that you were not
listening to the other person.</li>
<li>As you listen, be open, neutral, and withhold judgment and stereotypes.</li>
</ol>
<h3 id="tips">Tips</h3>
<ol>
<li>Show interest and encourage the other person to speak by smiling and nodding
during conversation.</li>
<li>It will be easier to ask yes/no and follow-up questions if you keep up- to-
date on news, entertainment and sporting events.</li>
<li>If there isn’t a natural follow-up question, and the other person is still
speaking, interject statements such as “Tell me more” or “Sounds interesting”
to encourage the other person.</li>
<li>If someone discloses something personal, such as a recent death in the family
or a divorce, it is usually best to offer sympathy and support rather than
ask for more details, unless you know the person very well. That person may
just want to explain his situation so that you know why he is not acting like
himself. Leave it up to him to decide how much to share.</li>
<li>Be patient while you listen. We are capable of listening much faster than
others can speak.</li>
<li>Learn to recognize active listening. Watch television interviews and observe
whether the interviewer is practicing active listening. Learn from the
mistakes of others.</li>
</ol>
<hr />
<ol>
<li><a href="http://socialanxietydisorder.about.com/od/socialskills/ht/How-To-Ask-Follow-Up-Questions-During-Small-Talk.htm">How to Ask Follow-Up Questions During Small Talk</a></li>
<li><a href="http://socialanxietydisorder.about.com/od/copingwithsad/ht/activelistening.htm">How To Practice Active Listening</a></li>
</ol>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
The Power of Avoiding Stupidity ∞
2013-11-04T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/11/avoiding-stupidity/
<blockquote>
<p>Spend less time trying to be brilliant and more time trying to avoid obvious
stupidity. The kicker? Avoiding stupidity is easier than seeking brilliance.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'The Power of Avoiding Stupidity'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2013/11/avoiding-stupidity/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Innovation Priorities For SMEs ∞
2013-10-22T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/10/sme-innovation-priority/
<blockquote>
<p>He said: “Innovation has become a really important way of communicating with
customers. Sales rarely happen these days as a result of a single moment; they
are nearly always dependent on dialogue, conversation and rapport with your
customers.”</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>He added: “Being innovative enables you to have ongoing conversations with
customers who aren’t going to be irritated by the intrusion and will instead
be curious or even delighted to hear from you, because people want to know
what’s new. They like the idea of being thought of as early adopters.”</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Devonshire said that SMEs relying on the launch of one product a year to take
their business forward should think again, saying that businesses should
ideally be creating new products and services, or ways of getting them to
customers, twice a quarter. “I would encourage small businesses to innovate
their proposition once every six weeks. Six weeks in the life of a customer is
a long time. If you are only launching one initiative a year to grow your
business you are asking a lot of it.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'Innovation Priorities For SMEs'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2013/10/sme-innovation-priority/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Mediocre Ideas, Showing Up, And Persistence ∞
2013-10-22T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/10/ideas-and-persistence/
<h3 id="mediocre-ideas">Mediocre Ideas</h3>
<blockquote>
<p>Truly great ideas are rare. Jokers like us will probably never have one.
That’s OK. We have mediocre ones all the time and they work just fine. I once
had an idea to start a blog about CSS. I sucked at writing. I sucked at
designing. The vibe at the time was that everything important about CSS had
already been written. Nobody told me.</p>
</blockquote>
<h3 id="showing-up">Showing Up</h3>
<blockquote>
<p>I didn’t just have the idea, I did it. That’s the showing up part. Hands on
the keyboard, go. I barely knew what I was doing. I stumbled through even
following simple walkthroughs on how to install the software. Executing your
ideas is never overly comfortable.</p>
</blockquote>
<h3 id="persistence">Persistence</h3>
<blockquote>
<p>Then never stop. Don’t get distracted by some other idea and prance away to
that tomorrow. Keep doing it until you’ve done everything you set out to do
and everyone and their mom knows it. I didn’t stop blogging when barely anyone
read it for years. I didn’t stop when people told me I was dumb or wrong. I
didn’t stop when redesigns were met with vitriol. I didn’t stop when faced
with mountainous challenges like inexplicable server failure, legal trouble,
and theft of the site itself.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="http://the-pastry-box-project.net/chris-coyier/2013-may-18/">Originally baked by Chris Coyier</a> on the <a href="http://the-pastry-box-project.net/">Pastry Box Project</a>.</p>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'Mediocre Ideas, Showing Up, And Persistence'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2013/10/ideas-and-persistence/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
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Kenya's Chronically Weak Economy That Posts Growth But Doesn't Work ∞
2013-10-22T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/10/chronically-weak-kenya/
<p>The highlights …</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In truth, ours is a chronically weak economy that has often succeeded in
posting high growth, but still struggles to meet most of the demands of the
ordinary citizen.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>We have had quantitative growth, but not qualitative development. Fifty years
later, our economy’s biggest weakness is its inability to provide decent jobs
for its citizens. More than ever before, many Kenyans are having to put up
with low-paying, low quality jobs.</p>
</blockquote>
<h3 id="quality-of-jobs">Quality Of Jobs</h3>
<blockquote>
<p>Every so often, our economists reel out statistics showing how hundreds of
thousands of jobs are created in the informal sector. But do we even pause to
ask about the quality of jobs in the informal sector — working conditions,
working hours, or the return on effort?</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>The truth is that work in the informal sector is characterised by maximum
physical exertion, inhuman working hours and meagre returns on effort.</p>
</blockquote>
<h3 id="spending">Spending</h3>
<blockquote>
<p>We have done very well in terms of jerking up infrastructure spending. We have
a fairly strong financial sector, but the growth of public sector debt as a
percentage of GDP is just too high.</p>
</blockquote>
<h3 id="the-way-forward">The Way Forward</h3>
<blockquote>
<p>Policy must seek to eliminate this sector so that we can move citizens away
from the beastly working conditions to sectors that can offer decent and
durable jobs.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'Kenya's Chronically Weak Economy That Posts Growth But Doesn't Work'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2013/10/chronically-weak-kenya/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
The Secret to Making Board Meetings Suck Less ∞
2013-10-18T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/10/sucky-board-meetings/
<blockquote>
<p>“When I was a young entrepreneur, board meetings were by far the worst days of
my life,” says Jeff Bonforte, the veteran company-builder who just sold his
latest, Xobni, to Yahoo. “Board meetings are the height of insecurity for a CEO.
Basically it’s a group of people who can both judge you and fire you based on
that judgment.”</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>He’s had his fair share of bad experiences. At his first company, iDrive, he’d
find himself every quarter standing in front of the room, sweating bullets,
struggling to get through his meticulously-prepared slides. “It was a mess,”
he says. “They’d just sit there and tell me how insufficient I was, how I
needed to bring in someone more senior, or smarter. Then it just hit me. I
don’t need this. I don’t need people to attack me for four straight hours. I
need people who can help me.”</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>This shift in philosophy has shaped the way Bonforte has handled his board
members and meetings ever since. The core of his new strategy: Your success as
a CEO is contingent on your board doing their best to help you — so put them
to work. Of course, this is easier said than done.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Read <a href="http://firstround.com/article/The-Secret-to-Making-Board-Meetings-Suck-Less">the full article</a> to see how this looks in practice.</p>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'The Secret to Making Board Meetings Suck Less'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2013/10/sucky-board-meetings/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Why God May Delay ∞
2013-10-18T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/10/god-and-his-delaying/
<blockquote>
<p><em>“Jesus lifted up His eyes, and seeing a great multitude coming toward Him, He
said to Philip, ‘Where shall we buy bread, that these may eat?’ But this He
said to test him, for He Himself knew what He would do.”</em><br />
<em>John 6:5,6</em></p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>When we see a need we grow frustrated. But when Jesus sees a need He already
knows what He wants to do. Not only will He meet the need, but He will reveal
Himself in the process. Sometimes He will leave the need unmet, at least for a
season, and just reveal Himself to us as All that we need (2 Corinthians
12:8,9).</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>This explains why it sometimes appears that the Lord delays in answering us.
He already knows what He is going to do, but we do not know. He waits for us
to see if we will trust Him as Infinite Supply. Is Jesus “Lord” only after He
answers us? Or is Jesus “Lord” whether He answers us or not? The Lord’s
“proving ground” is just there, in between the Need and the Answer. And
sometimes it is, indeed, quite a stretching, and a thorough test.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'Why God May Delay'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2013/10/god-and-his-delaying/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Never Sit At A Table You Can't Walk Away From ∞
2013-10-16T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/10/should-you-sit-at-the-table/
<blockquote>
<p>This is something that I do consider to be good advice: I took my first
paycheck and I put it in the goddamn bank. Then I took my second paycheck and
put it in the goddamn bank. I had seen the roller coaster of my father’s
career—top of the world, then unemployed, top of the world, then
unemployed—and I never wanted to take a job because I needed money, and I
never have. I saved my money, so when I went, for instance, to The WB with
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I said, “This is Buffy the Vampire Slayer. If you
want something LIKE Buffy the Vampire Slayer, God bless, I’m outta here. If
you want THIS, this is what I’m doing.” The one thing a creator can bring to
the table when everybody else has all the money and power is a centeredness
and the ability to walk away. Never sit at a table you can’t walk away from.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Interesting advice from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joss_Whedon">Joss Whedon</a> from <a href="http://insidetv.ew.com/2013/09/24/joss-whedon-interview/">‘The Definitive EW
Interview’</a>.</p>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'Never Sit At A Table You Can't Walk Away From'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2013/10/should-you-sit-at-the-table/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Make Things Of Value ∞
2013-10-14T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/10/make-things-of-value/
<blockquote>
<p>To produce better digital work, I’ve lately found myself thinking analog.
Technology makes it so simple and seamless to build platforms and disseminate
content that it’s almost too easy. It allows us to publish without knowing
what we hope to accomplish. This is why a lot of content on the web feels like
knee-jerk reactions to buzzwords. “Build an app.” “Tweet that.” “Post this.”
“Make a microsite for it.” The result? Clutter. Content that exists because it
can, not because it should.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>A simple solution is to ask myself, “If this was print, would it still be
worth doing?” Does this message deserve to be written out by hand? Would I
actually “share” this photo or video if I had to deliver it in person? A
common refrain in the creative community is “make things,” but that statement
leaves out a very important qualifier: “make things of value.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'Make Things Of Value'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2013/10/make-things-of-value/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Take Care Of The Customer ∞
2013-10-10T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/10/take-care-of-the-customer/
<blockquote>
<p>The sales director of the Flemington Nissan dealership in the central New
Jersey town of Flemington is a man named Bob Golomb. […] Since starting in
the car business more than a decade ago, Golomb has sold, on average, about
twenty cars a month, which is more than double what the average car salesman
sells. On his desk Golomb has a row of five gold stars, given to him by his
dealership in honor of his performance. In the world of car salesmen, Golomb
is a virtuoso.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>[…]</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>He’s the Evelyn Harrison of car selling. He has a quiet, watchful intelligence
and a courtly charm. He is thoughtful and attentive. He’s a wonderful
listener. He has, he says, three simple rules that guide his every action:
“Take care of the customer. Take care of the customer. Take care of the
customer.” If you buy a car from Bob Golomb, he will be on the phone to you
the next day, making sure everything is all right. If you come to the
dealership but don’t end up buying anything, he’ll call you the next day,
thanking you for stopping by. “You always put on your best face, even if you
are having a bad day. You leave that behind,” he says. “Even if things are
horrendous at home, you give the customer your best.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>From <a href="http://amzn.to/18p6vQH">Blink: The Power Of Thinking Without Thinking</a> by Malcolm Gladwell.
Even if you don’t sell cars, there’s something that you can pick from that
little excerpt.</p>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'Take Care Of The Customer'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2013/10/take-care-of-the-customer/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Free Radicals
2013-10-10T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/10/free-radicals/
<blockquote>
<p>When it comes to our careers and our experience at work, we’ve become
selfish—but in a good way. Getting paid is no longer enough; we expect to
actually learn on the job. We want our skills to be fully utilized and are
left unsatisfied by “easy jobs.” We want more responsibility when we’re ready,
rather than waiting until we’ve “put in our time.” We expect to do more of
what we love, automating the more laborious and monotonous parts of our work.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Chalk it up to new technology, social media, or the once out-of-reach business
tools now at your fingertips. The fact is, we’re empowered to work on our own
terms and do more with less. As a result, we expect more from those that
employ us and we expect more from ourselves. When we get the resources and
opportunities we deserve, we create the future.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Here’s a name for us: <em><strong>Free Radicals</strong></em>.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Free Radicals want to take their careers into their own hands and put the
world to work for them. Free Radicals are resilient, self-reliant, and
extremely potent. You’ll find them working solo, in small teams, or within
large companies. As the world changes, Free Radicals have re-imagined “work”
as we know it. No doubt, we have lofty expectations:</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>We do work that is, first and foremost, intrinsically rewarding</strong> But, we
don’t create solely for ourselves, we want to make a real and lasting impact
in the world around us.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>We thrive on flexibility and are most productive when we feel fully
engaged</strong> We demand freedom, whether we work within companies or on our own,
to run experiments, participate in multiple projects at once, and move our
ideas forward.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>We make stuff often, and therefore, we fail often</strong> Ultimately, we strive
for little failures that help us course-correct along the way, and we view
every failure as a learning opportunity, part of our experiential education.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>We have little tolerance for the friction of bureaucracy, old-boy networks,
and antiquated business practices</strong> As often as possible, we question
“standard operating procedure” and assert ourselves. But even when we can’t,
we don’t surrender to the friction of the status quo. Instead, we find clever
ways (and hacks) around it.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>We expect to be fully utilized and constantly optimized, regardless of
whether we’re working in a startup or a large organization</strong> When our
contributions and learning plateau, we leave. But when we’re leveraging a
large company’s resources to make an impact in something we care about, we are
thrilled! We want to always be doing our best work and making the greatest
impact we can.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>We consider “open source” technology, API’s, and the vast collective
knowledge of the Internet to be our personal arsenal</strong> Wikipedia, Quora, and
open communities for designers, developers, and thinkers were built by us and
for us. Whenever possible, we leverage collective knowledge to help us make
better decisions for ourselves and our clients. We also contribute to these
open resources with a “pay it forward” mentality.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>We believe that “networking” is sharing</strong> People listen to (and follow) us
because of our discernment and curatorial instinct. As we share our creations
as well as what fascinates us, we authentically build a community of
supporters that give us feedback, encouragement, and lead us to new
opportunities. For this reason and more, we often (though, not always) opt for
transparency over privacy.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>We believe in meritocracy and the power of online networks and peer
communities to advance our ability to do what we love, and do well by doing
it</strong><br />
We view competition as a positive motivator rather than a threat, because we
want the best idea – and the best execution – to triumph.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>We make a great living doing what we love. We consider ourselves as both
artisans and businesses</strong><br />
In many cases, we are our own accounting department, Madison Avenue marketing
agency, business development manager, negotiator, and salesperson. We spend
the necessary energy to invest in ourselves as businesses – leveraging the
best tools and knowledge (most of which are free and online) to run ourselves
as a modern-day enterprise.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Excerpt from <a href="http://amzn.to/GMGIZJ">Maximize Your Potential: Grow Your Expertise, Take Bold Risks
& Build an Incredible Career</a> by Jocelyn K. Glei — foreword by Scott
Belsky.</p>
<p>Check out <a href="http://99u.com/book/maximize-your-potential">the book’s official web page</a>. It’s actually part of the <a href="http://99u.com/book">99U
Book Series</a>.</p>
<hr />
<ol>
<li><a href="http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130924212836-4074853-the-free-radical-at-work">The Free Radical At Work (LinkedIn)</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2013/10/maximize-your-potential-99u/">Do Not Follow Your Passion, Cultivate It</a></li>
<li><a href="http://99u.com/articles/7098/a-manifesto-for-free-radicals-less-paperwork-less-waiting-more-action">A Manifesto For Free Radicals: Less Paperwork, Less Waiting, More Action</a></li>
<li><a href="http://99u.com/">99U: Insights On Making Ideas Happen</a> by <a href="http://www.behance.net/">Behance</a></li>
</ol>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Failure Is Overrated ∞
2013-10-06T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/10/overrated-failure/
<p>Right after <a href="/articles/2013/10/failure/">I post an article emphasizing the lessons of failure to the
point of breaking it down to two types</a> … I stumble on this.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I don’t understand the cultural fascination with failure being the source of
great lessons to be learned. What did you learn? You learned what didn’t work.
Now you won’t make the same mistake twice, but you’re just as likely to make a
different mistake next time. You might know what won’t work, but you still
don’t know what will work. That’s not much of a lesson.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Instead, put most of your energy into studying your successes. What have you
done right? What worked? Why did it work? How you can repeat it? Instead of
making something worse a little better, how about making something good a
little better? Don’t spend so much time looking down. Look up more.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Ah. Brill all over.</p>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'Failure Is Overrated'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2013/10/overrated-failure/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Two Kinds Of Failure ∞
2013-10-03T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/10/failure/
<blockquote>
<p>The first comes from never trying out your ideas because you are afraid, or
because you are waiting for the perfect time. This kind of failure you can
never learn from, and such timidity will destroy you. The second kind comes
from a bold and venturesome spirit. If you fail in this way, the hit that you
take to your reputation is greatly outweighed by what you learn. Repeated
failure will toughen your spirit and show you with absolute clarity how things
must be done. In fact, it is a curse to have everything go right on your first
attempt. You will fail to question the element of luck, making you think that
you have the golden touch. When you do inevitably fail, it will confuse and
demoralize you past the point of learning. In any case, to apprentice as an
entrepreneur you must act on your ideas as early as possible, exposing them to
the public, a part of you even hoping that you’ll fail. You have everything to
gain.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Off <a href="http://amzn.to/19XIWfX">Mastery</a> by Robert Greene, thanks to <a href="http://www.farnamstreetblog.com/">Shane Parrish of Farnam
Street</a>.</p>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'Two Kinds Of Failure'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2013/10/failure/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Quarter Life Crisis
2013-09-30T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/09/quarter-life-crisis/
<blockquote>
<p>Being in your twenties …</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>It is when you stop going along with the crowd and start realizing that there
are many things about yourself that you didn’t know and may not like. You
start feeling insecure and wonder where you will be in a year or two, but then
get scared because you barely know where you are now.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>You start realizing that people are selfish and that, maybe, those friends
that you thought you were so close to you aren’t exactly the greatest people
you have ever met, and the people you have lost touch with are some of the
most important ones. What you don’t recognize is that they are realizing that
too, and they aren’t really cold, catty, mean or insincere, but that they are
just as confused as you.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>You look at your job … and it is not even close to what you thought you
would be doing, or maybe you are looking for a job and realizing that you are
going to have to start at the bottom and that scares you. Your opinions have
gotten stronger. You see what others are doing and find yourself judging more
than usual because suddenly you realize that you have certain boundaries in
your life and are constantly adding things to your list of what is acceptable
and what isn’t. One minute, you are insecure and then the next, secure.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>You laugh and cry with the greatest force of your life. You feel alone and
scared and confused. Suddenly, change is the enemy and you try and cling on to
the past with dear life, but soon realize that the past is drifting further
and further away, and there is nothing to do but stay where you are or move
forward.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>You get your heart broken and wonder how someone you loved could do such
damage to you. Or you lie in bed and wonder why you can’t meet anyone decent
enough that you want to get to know better. Or maybe you love someone but love
someone else too and cannot figure out why you’re doing this because you know
that you aren’t a bad person. You want to settle down for good because now all
of a sudden that becomes top priority. Getting wasted and acting like an idiot
starts to look pathetic. You begin to think a companion for life is better
than a hundred in the shack and for once you would not mind standing tall for
that special someone which otherwise you had never thought of until now.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>You go through the same emotions and questions over and over, and talk with
your friends about the same topics because you cannot seem to make a decision.
You worry about loans, money, the future and making a life for yourself …
and while winning the race would be great, right now you’d just like to be a
contender!</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>What you may not realize is that every one reading this relates to it. We are
in our best of times and our worst of times, trying as hard as we can to
figure this whole thing out.</p>
</blockquote>
<hr />
<ol>
<li>I can’t, for the life of me, remember where I got this so don’t sue me.</li>
<li>Gimme a shout if you know the origin so I can give credit where it’s due.</li>
</ol>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Lean Business Canvas
2013-09-22T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/09/lean-business-canvas/
<p>Lessons from <a href="https://twitter.com/ashmaurya">Ash Maurya</a>, author of <a href="http://runninglean.co/">Running Lean</a> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1449305172/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1449305172&linkCode=as2&tag=kingori-20">(book)</a> and
founder of <a href="http://www.spark59.com/">Sparks59</a>. Follow him on twitter as <a href="https://twitter.com/ashmaurya">@ashmaurya</a>.</p>
<ul>
<li>Life’s too short to built something nobody wants.</li>
<li>Ideas are cheap but acting on them is really expensive.</li>
<li>Most startups/products fail.</li>
<li>Most plan A’s don’t work.</li>
<li>Most that succeed drastically change their plan along the way.</li>
<li>Most fail not because they fail to build what they set out to build, but
because they spend too much time, money, and effort building the wrong
product.</li>
<li>Those that succeed are those that are able to find a plan that works before
running out of resources.</li>
<li>Finding a plan that works involves getting <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empirical_evidence">empirical evidence</a> from
people other than yourself (team, advisors, customers) and then refining the
plan using the feedback.</li>
<li><em>“There is no such thing as a failed experiment, only unexpected outcomes.”</em> -
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckminster_Fuller">Buckminster Fuller</a></li>
<li>Time is the scarcest resource therefore <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeboxing">time-box</a> the initial canvas so
that you don’t fall under <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_paralysis">analysis-paralysis</a>.</li>
<li>Perfection is not the goal.</li>
<li>The media loves stories of visionaries who see the future and chart a perfect
course to intersect it but that is not reality.</li>
<li>The perfect plan is a myth.</li>
<li>True unfair advantages are rarely built from the solution because often the
solution is purposely defined in such a manner that there’s no competition
(possibly leading to false positives).</li>
<li>Being first to market is not necessarily an advantage (proven by history).</li>
<li>Investors don’t care about the solution. They are in the business of making a
return on their investment.</li>
<li>Customers don’t care about the solution. They care about products that solve
their problems.</li>
<li>A customer’s value preposition (promise) is an intersection of a customer’s
top problems and your top solutions.</li>
<li>Your <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_proposition">UVP (Unique Value Preposition)</a> needs to be unique and needs to
matter.</li>
<li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_product">MVP (Minimal Viable Product)</a> is the smallest solution that you can build
that still delivers the customer promise.</li>
<li>The true product of an entrepreneur isn’t the solution, but a working business
model.</li>
<li>The true job of an entrepreneur is systematically de-risking that business
model over time over a series of converations (building a successful product
is fundamentally about risk mitigation).</li>
<li>While passion and determination are key attributes of success, left unchecked
they can also turn the journey into a faith based one largely driven by
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogma">dogma</a> as opposed to facts.</li>
<li>Entrepreneurs are obsessed with the solution (also known as <em>‘the awesome’</em>).</li>
<li>Users are not customers. Customers pay.</li>
<li><em>“A problem well stated is a problem half solved.”</em> - <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_F._Kettering">Charles Kettering</a></li>
<li>Avoid empty marketing promises like <em>‘fast’</em>, <em>‘simple’</em> and <em>‘easy’</em>. You are
not Apple. They get away with it because they’ve built a brand around
simplicity.</li>
<li>Always have a <a href="http://venturehacks.com/articles/high-concept-pitch">high-concept pitch</a> but don’t place it in your pitch.</li>
<li>Pricing is part of your product.</li>
<li>Pricing determines your customers.</li>
<li>Customers naturally compare your product to existing alternatives, not what it
cost you to deliver your solution.</li>
<li>Position your solution against existing alternatives.</li>
<li>Keep your pricing simple.</li>
<li>Have key metrics, they tell you how well you are doing.</li>
<li>Always have a success metric. Begin with an end in mind by defining success.</li>
<li><em>“A real unfair advantage is something that cannot be easily copied or
bought.”</em> - <a href="http://blog.asmartbear.com/">Jason Cohen</a></li>
<li>Unfair advantages can be built over time.</li>
<li>Unfair advantages are not testable. They are revealed by copycats and
competition.</li>
<li>When you try market to everyone you end up marketing to no one.</li>
<li>Initial adopters define your initial model.</li>
<li>An <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_adopter">early adopter</a> is someone who wants your product so badly that they
are able to tolerate a less that perfect version and jump through hoops if
needed.</li>
<li>A <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business">business</a> is not a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobby">hobby</a>.</li>
<li>Good marketing is essentially about connecting with your customer’s needs and
de-risking the offer so that they pick you over the alternative.</li>
<li>There’s a difference between risk and uncertainty. High uncertainty doesn’t
always mean high risk.</li>
<li>Uncertainty is the lack of complete certainty i.e. the existence of more than
one possibility.</li>
<li>Risk is a quantifiable state of uncertainty i.e. where we can qualify a
certain value to being wrong and the possible outcomes could be an undesirable
outcome.</li>
<li>While everything on a business canvas is uncertain, not every aspect is
uncertain to the same degree (from a risk perspective).</li>
<li>Product risk involves getting the product right (product, solution, UVP, cost
structure, revenue streams).</li>
<li>Customer risk involves building a path to the customer (channels, customer
segments, early adopters).</li>
<li>Market risk involves building a viable business for a certain market (existing
alternatives, key metrics, cost structure, revenue streams, unfair advantage).</li>
<li>Charge for your product from day one as opposed to hiding behind alpha/beta
excuse.</li>
<li>Testing if people will pay is a learning goal, testing for the optimum price
is an optimisation goal.</li>
<li>Uncover risks that you don’t know about by having conversations with other
people e.g. advisors.</li>
<li>A slide deck, assumes context that is best communicated in person. Prefer
meeting over email.</li>
<li><em>“Advisor Paradox: Hire advisors for advice but don’t follow it, apply it.”</em> -
<a href="http://venturehacks.com/">Venture Hacks</a></li>
<li><em>“If you can’t describe what you do as a process you don’t know what you are
doing.”</em> - <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming">Edward Deming</a></li>
</ul>
<hr />
<ol>
<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouHDNBT_leg">Video: Why Startups (Products) Fail</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7o8uYdUaFR4">Video: Capture Your Business Model in 20 Minutes</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sn7pZXY5b4">Video: Top 10 Business Model Pitfalls</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01z7EPXS42k">Video: How to Prioritize Risks on Your Business Model</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiMZWCg1Hu8">Video: Systematically Test Your Business Model Through Experiments</a></li>
<li><a href="http://runninglean.co/">Book: Running Lean</a> (website - <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1449305172/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1449305172&linkCode=as2&tag=kingori-20">get the book on Amazon</a>)</li>
</ol>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Creating Value: You Never Know What Book You Wrote Until You Know What Book People Read ∞
2013-09-18T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/09/creating-value/
<blockquote>
<p>There’s a great moment in a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Lewis">Michael Lewis</a> interview that I heard recently
on NPR. (Unfortunately, I don’t have a specific link.) Why, Lewis was asked,
would anyone in the financial industry talk to him for his book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Big-Short-Inside-Doomsday-Machine/dp/0393338827/">The Big
Short</a> after the devastating picture of Wall Street he’d painted in his
first book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Liars-Poker-Michael-Lewis/dp/039333869X">Liar’s Poker</a>, nearly twenty years earlier? You have to
understand, Lewis replied (more or less), that many of those people got into
the financial industry after reading his book. Their big takeaway was how easy
it was to make a lot of money without regard to the niceties of creating much
value. He finished with the memorable line, “You never know what book you
wrote until you know what book people read.”</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>That turned out to be a major problem for me at O’Reilly. I talked so much
about our ideals, our goal to create more value than we capture, to change the
world by spreading the knowledge of innovators, that I forgot to make sure
everyone understood that we were still a business. Even when I said things
like, “Money in a business is like gas in the car. You have to fill the tank,
but a road trip is not a tour of gas stations,” people heard the “road trip is
not a tour of gas stations” way louder than they heard “you have to fill the
tank.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>An interesting perspective of the value that you create. This is just an excerpt
from <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130913150218-16553-how-i-failed">How I Failed</a> by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_O'Reilly">Tim O’Reilly</a>.</p>
<p>
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King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Worse Is Human ∞
2013-09-17T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/09/worse-human/
<blockquote>
<p>We come up with all sorts of justifications for this affection for worse.
Manual gearboxes give you more control. Mechanical watches are about the
craftsmanship. Range-finders have great image quality in a small package.
Vinyl on tube sounds warmer. It’s mostly bullshit. Endearing bullshit, but
bullshit nonetheless.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>My pocket psychology take is that we love anachronisms because they’re
imperfect. Like humans are imperfect. We form relationships with people who
are flawed all the time. Flaws, imperfection, and worse are all part of the
human condition. Tools that embody them resonate.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s hard to engineer this, though, but it’s worth cherishing when you have
it. Don’t be so eager to iron out all the flaws. Maybe those flaws are exactly
why people love your product.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The <a href="http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3621-worse-is-human">original article</a> is actually five paragraphs. The first two pretty much
serve the purpose of setting the scene but the last three capture the message in
totality even in isolation.</p>
<p>I long for the day I can encapsulate such a complex thought in so few words.</p>
<p>
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</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
I Ride Lions ∞
2013-09-17T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/09/riding-lions/
<h5 id="entrepreneurship">Entrepreneurship</h5>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s like a man riding a lion. People think, ‘This guy’s brave.’ And he’s
thinking, ‘How the hell did I get on a lion, and how do I keep from getting
eaten?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
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King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Don't Be Boring ∞
2013-09-17T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/09/bore-no-one/
<blockquote>
<p>All businesses need to be young forever. If your customer base ages with you,
you’re Woolworth’s,” added Bezos, who created the world’s leading online
retailer. “The number one rule has to be: Don’t be boring.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
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King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
The Tenth Man Rule ∞
2013-09-15T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/09/tenth-man-rule/
<p>In <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0816711/">World War Z</a> …</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Boeken explains how the Jewish people were slow to respond in Europe during
the 1930s, equivocated during the escalation of Arab armaments in 1973 and
paid for it both times. Now, a system exists where 10 high-ranking individuals
are pooled to take every threat seriously. If nine agree to dismiss it, it is
the duty of the tenth person to investigate further, even if it seems foolish.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>~ <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/in-turkey-world-war-z-is-no-world-war-zion/">timesofisrael.com</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>According to <a href="http://www.quora.com/Eytan-Buchman">Eytan Buchman</a>, IDF spokesperson on <a href="http://www.quora.com/Eytan-Buchman">a Quora discussion on the
10th man doctrine</a> …</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Israeli military does indeed have a similar doctrine but it is not called
the 10th man doctrine.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Intelligence is all about piecing together information amassed from a variety
of sources. Like any puzzle in earlier stages, some pieces can be
misinterpreted, which could lead to a cascading effect of incorrectly
interpreted information. After the Yom Kippur War (1973), the IDF’s
Intelligence Directorate created a Red Team, a devil’s advocate team that can
challenge prevalent assumptions within intelligence bodies.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>The unit is a small and elite one that consists primarily of officers with
academic backgrounds. One of the key elements is access. The officers have
unfettered access to information through the military and are capable of
tendering reports to senior levels - even reaching above the major general who
commands military intelligence. The combination of access to information and
the ability to challenge hypotheses by going above the command chain is
critical in providing a control for intelligence reports.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>The unit’s tag line is based on the classic <em>“He who dares, wins”</em> used by the
SAS, and changed to <em>“He who thinks, wins”</em>. The unit is also referred to
occasionally as <em>“Ipcha Mistabra”</em>, an Aramaic term popular in the Jewish
Talmud that means <em>“on the contrary, it appears that …“</em></p>
</blockquote>
<hr />
<ol>
<li><a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/in-turkey-world-war-z-is-no-world-war-zion/">In Turkey, ‘World War Z’ is no World War Zion</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2007/10/intelligence%20kuperwasser/10_intelligence_kuperwasser.pdf">Lessons From Israel’s Intelligence Reforms</a> by Yosef Kuperwasser, who
used to head the Research Division of the IDF. Search for <em>“The devil’s
advocate office ensures that AMAN’s intelligence assessments are creative
and do not fall prey to group think.”</em></li>
</ol>
<p>
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King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
God Is The Focus Of Prayer ∞
2013-09-12T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/09/god-focus/
<blockquote>
<p><strong>Matthew 6:9-13</strong></p>
<p>Our Father in heaven <em>(God’s Paternity)</em><br />
Hallowed be your name <em>(God’s Priority)</em><br />
Your kingdom come <em>(God’s Program)</em><br />
Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven <em>(God’s Purpose)</em><br />
Give us this day our daily bread <em>(God’s Provision)</em><br />
And forgive us our debts, as we have forgiven our debtors <em>(God’s Pardon)</em><br />
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil <em>(God’s Protection)</em><br />
For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever <em>(God’s Pre-eminence)</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>~ John MacArthur.</p>
<p>
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King'ori Maina
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Jonathan Harris: Trends In Today's Online Culture ∞
2013-08-30T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/08/trends-in-todays-online-culture/
<h3 id="my-thoughts">My Thoughts</h3>
<p>I’ve been thinking about the effects of social media (the online culture as a
whole) … particularly how communication (at least in my view) is losing that
personal/human feel. Our patience is eroding. Personally, I find it hard to read
articles that are too long and I’d attribute this current state to us <em>‘getting-
used-to-140-character-tweets-posts-newsfeeds’</em>, which give us an on-demand,
brief and constantly flowing update of what’s happening at any given time - to
the second.</p>
<p>I’m unable to conclude if this is a good or bad thing. After all, every
generation experiences a disruption of they way they used to do things and this
is often coupled with the previous generation lamenting about how <em>‘things were
better back in my day’</em>. I couldn’t find the words for my discomfort with this
trend until I stumbled <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhPjrlPOTG8">on this video</a>.</p>
<p>He takes the words right out of my mouth. Here goes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I really see Twitter, and Facebook to a slightly lesser extent, but really
Twitter, as routing devices for human attention. They are very good at that,
they are very effectively providing our species with a common nervous system
which we can use to transmit signals to each other. And so when there’s
something that is a very provocative or disturbing signal or a beautiful
signal, it’s a great system to get a lot of humans’ attention directed at that
thing very very quickly and that can actually happen in a matter of moments
now or minutes. So as routing devices, Twitter and Facebook are incredibly
effective and I think do that very elegantly. It’s as self-expressive mediums,
they are less elegant. And I actually don’t think they are designed to be
self-expressive mediums in the same way that a blank piece of paper and a pen
is designed to be a self-expressive medium.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And he goes on to explain the four trends that he’s noticed in online culture.</p>
<h3 id="trend-1-compression">Trend 1: Compression</h3>
<blockquote>
<p>One thing we’ve seen, actually predating the web, but accentuated with the
web, is the compressing and shortening and speeding up of communication. So
you can go back to letter writing which gave way to eventually telephone calls
which gave way to faxes which gave way to emails which gave way to text
messages and chat and tweets and … each successive level gets like more and
more compressed and shorter and faster and we are sort of hovering at the
tweet right now. And it was unclear to me that there’s another level of
compression after that, there maybe is one more, like maybe we start grunting
at each other or something but … we’ve pretty much hit a kind of terminal
velocity, I think, in terms of how fast communication can go. So then you ask
the quesiton like, what happens after that? And do we continue to do that mode
or do we hit some kind of wall and bounce back in the other direction craving
a little more depth and substance again?</p>
</blockquote>
<h3 id="trend-2-disposability">Trend 2: Disposability</h3>
<blockquote>
<p>A lot of the stuff that we put out there into the world as individuals, we
have this sort of complicit understanding that it’s going to be swallowed up
and replaced moments after we publish it by the torrent of new stuff that
comes after it, there’s the sense of just expressing yourself in a sort of
disposable way that won’t have any sort of lasting impact.</p>
</blockquote>
<h3 id="trend-3-curation">Trend 3: Curation</h3>
<blockquote>
<p>So people were increasingly expressing themselves through the stuff that they
thought was cool. So there are web services like Pinterest and Tumblr and
Twitter and Facebook, which have really encouraged this type of self
expression in our culture. It’s a lot easier than creating things directly …
to assemble lists is easier than to come up with original stuff. So I noticed
that a lot of self expression online was taking the form of curation. It’s
like walking into someone’s apartment and judging them by what they have
hanging on the walls instead of talking to them.</p>
</blockquote>
<h3 id="trend-4-self-promotion">Trend 4: Self-promotion</h3>
<blockquote>
<p>Life as an advertisement. This is something, I think we all feel, to different
degress, when we fill out our Facebook profiles and when we develop these
online personas. There’s this way that we try to advertise ourselves and look
as awesome as we possibly can like, “Look how hot my girlfriend is … Look
how wild my party was … Look at how fun my vacation was …” all of these
things. But I think that creates a lot of unhealthy tendencies in people
because you start comparing yourselves to others, you’re always looking for
ways to look cooler than you are, leads insecurity and anxiety.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Spot … on.</p>
<p>
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King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Problem-solving Versus Consulting ∞
2013-08-29T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/08/problem-solving-consulting/
<p>Apprently, they aren’t the same thing.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’d just had a tough conversation about a client project when a mentor of mine
said this to me a few months ago. And I knew immediately what she meant. I’d
been so caught up in the fact that I saw what this organization was doing
wrong—why their website had become a dumping ground, where they needed to
change their processes, what they should be focusing on—that I could have sat
down and diagrammed a tidy little flow chart right there. And yet, my client
wasn’t happy.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Specifically, my client wasn’t happy with me.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Like getting pushed from behind or dumped on prom night, I hadn’t seen this
coming. I had the answers, after all. I was solving the Big Problems, problems
that others didn’t have the tools to untangle, problems others had struggled
with for years.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Only I hadn’t spent enough time listening to make my client feel heard. I
hadn’t made them part of the solution. So there my client was, feeling
overwhelmed and left behind, while I was patting myself on the back.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I recommend that you <a href="http://the-pastry-box-project.net/sara-wachter-boettcher/2013-august-27/">read the full article</a> by <a href="http://sarawb.com/">Sara Wachter-Boettcher</a>.
This specific snippet was extracted from one of her pastries from <a href="http://the-pastry-box-project.net/baker/sara-wachter-boettcher/">The Pastry
Box Project</a>.</p>
<p>
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King'ori Maina
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Legendary Developers ∞
2013-08-29T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/08/developer-legends/
<blockquote>
<p>Job descriptions make developers out to be even more legendary — requesting 10
years of experience in a platform that has only been around for 5 or listing
every language ever used expecting expert knowledge in all of them. It’s not
realistic, but to a certain degree it is expected, and it’s that expectation
that makes a developer’s job interesting and inherently challenging. The only
predictable thing about our work is that it’s not. No amount of education can
prepare you for this universal truth, it can only be understood by doing.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>~ Benjamin Bojko, Senior Technologist @ <a href="http://www.bigspaceship.com/">Big Spaceship</a></p>
<hr />
<ol>
<li>I’ve been on a <a href="http://the-pastry-box-project.net/">Pastry Project</a> binge. Even the <a href="/articles/2013/08/problem-solving-consulting/">previous article</a>
is/was a pastry.</li>
<li>Anyway … I found this particlularly relevant (to a personal level). Being
… (1) a developer, (2) the backend guy at <a href="https://waabeh.com/">Waabeh</a> and (3) having a
applied for a couple developer roles … I have found myself, on more than
one occassion, expressing the same sentiments (albeit with less clarity).</li>
</ol>
<p>
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http://kingori.co/
The Cathedral And The Bazaar ∞
2013-08-09T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/08/cathedral-and-bazaar/
<p>First published in 1997 by <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a> and revised occassionally
between 1997 & 2001. This has got to be one of the finest essays I’ve come
across.</p>
<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar">Read about it on Wikipedia</a> for a good introduction.</p>
<p>Main points listed below:</p>
<ol>
<li>Every good work of software starts by scratching a developer’s personal itch.</li>
<li>Good programmers know what to write. Great ones know what to rewrite (and
reuse).</li>
<li>Plan to throw one [version] away; you will, anyhow.</li>
<li>If you have the right attitude, interesting problems will find you.</li>
<li>When you lose interest in a program, your last duty to it is to hand it off
to a competent successor.</li>
<li>Treating your users as co-developers is your least-hassle route to rapid code
improvement and effective debugging.</li>
<li>Release early. Release often. And listen to your customers.</li>
<li>Given a large enough beta-tester and co-developer base, almost every problem
will be characterized quickly and the fix obvious to someone.</li>
<li>Smart data structures and dumb code works a lot better than the other way
around.</li>
<li>If you treat your beta-testers as if they’re your most valuable resource,
they will respond by becoming your most valuable resource.</li>
<li>The next best thing to having good ideas is recognizing good ideas from your
users. Sometimes the latter is better.</li>
<li>Often, the most striking and innovative solutions come from realizing that
your concept of the problem was wrong.</li>
<li>Perfection (in design) is achieved not when there is nothing more to add,
but rather when there is nothing more to take away.</li>
<li>Any tool should be useful in the expected way, but a truly great tool lends
itself to uses you never expected.</li>
<li>When writing gateway software of any kind, take pains to disturb the data
stream as little as possible—and never throw away information unless the
recipient forces you to!</li>
<li>When your language is nowhere near Turing-complete, syntactic sugar can be
your friend.</li>
<li>A security system is only as secure as its secret. Beware of pseudo-secrets.</li>
<li>To solve an interesting problem, start by finding a problem that is
interesting to you.</li>
<li>Provided the development coordinator has a communications medium at least as
good as the Internet, and knows how to lead without coercion, many heads are
inevitably better than one.</li>
</ol>
<p>Brilliant. <em>Just brilliant</em>.</p>
<p>
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King'ori Maina
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How To Get Smarter ∞
2013-08-06T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/08/how-to-get-smarter/
<p>Read. A lot. Go to bed every day, a little smarter than you were when you woke
up.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I constantly see people rise in life who are not the smartest, sometimes not
even the most diligent, but they are learning machines. They go to bed every
night a little wiser than they were when they got up and boy does that help,
particularly when you have a long run ahead of you. <em>~ <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Munger">Charlie Munger</a></em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>But <a href="http://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2013/05/the-buffett-formula-how-to-get-smarter/">how you read</a> matters too.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Consider the newspaper, are you truly learning anything new? Do you consider
the writer your superior when it comes to knowledge in the subject? Odds are
probably not. That means you’re reading for information.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>There’s nothing wrong with that; it’s how most people read. But you’re not
really learning anything new. It’s not going to give you an edge or make you
better at your job.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Learning something insightful is harder, you have to read something clearly
above your current level. You need to find writers who are more knowledgeable
on a particular subject than yourself. It’s also <a href="http://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2013/05/the-buffett-formula-how-to-get-smarter/">how you get smarter</a>.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Reading for understanding means narrowing the gap between reader and writer.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Be critical and always thinking. You need to do <a href="http://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2013/04/the-work-required-to-have-an-opinion/">the mental work required to
hold an opinion</a>.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>You’re not entitled to take a view, unless and until you can argue better
against that view than the smartest guy who holds that opposite view. If you
can argue better than the smartest person who holds the opposite view, that is
when you are entitled to hold a certain view. <em>~ <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Munger">Charlie Munger</a></em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Think. Especially for yourself.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“No,” says Warren. “We don’t read other people’s opinions. We want to get the
“facts, and then think.” And when it gets to the thinking part, for Buffett
“and Munger, there’s no one better to think with than their partners. “Charlie
“can’t encounter a problem without thinking of an answer,” posits Warren. “He
“has the best thirty-second mind I’ve ever seen. I’ll call him up, and within
“thirty seconds, he’ll grasp it. He just sees things immediately.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Find time to read. Invest in yourself.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Charlie, as a very young lawyer, was probably getting $20 an hour. He thought
to himself, ‘Who’s my most valuable client?’ And he decided it was himself. So
he decided to sell himself an hour each day. He did it early in the morning,
working on these construction projects and real estate deals. Everybody should
do this, be the client, and then work for other people, too, and sell yourself
an hour a day. <em>~ <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0553384619/">The Snowball</a> (book)</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Learn to express it.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We read a lot. I don’t know anyone who’s wise who doesn’t read a lot. But
that’s not enough: You have to have a temperament to grab ideas and do
sensible things. Most people don’t grab the right ideas or don’t know what to
do with them. <em>~ <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Munger">Charlie Munger</a></em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Surround yourself with people who are not afraid to challenge your ideas.</p>
<hr />
<ol>
<li><a href="http://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2013/05/the-buffett-formula-how-to-get-smarter/">The Buffett Formula — How To Get Smarter</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2013/04/the-work-required-to-have-an-opinion/">The Work Required To Have An Opinion</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0553384619/">The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life</a></li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Munger">Charlie Munger</a></li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_buffet">Warren Buffett</a></li>
</ol>
<p>
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</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
What Matters More, Analysis Or Process? ∞
2013-08-05T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/08/analysis-or-process/
<blockquote>
<p>Imagine walking into a courtroom where the trial consists of a prosecutor
presenting PowerPoint slides. In 20 pretty compelling charts, he demonstrates
why the defendant is guilty. The judge then challenges some of the facts of
the presentation, but the prosecutor has a good answer to every objection. So
the judge decides, and the accused man is sentenced.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>That wouldn’t be due process, right? So if you would find this process
shocking in a courtroom, why is it acceptable when you make an investment
decision? Now of course, this is an oversimplification, but this process is
essentially the one most companies follow to make a decision. They have a team
arguing only one side of the case. The team has a choice of what points it
wants to make and what way it wants to make them. And it falls to the final
decision maker to be both the challenger and the ultimate judge. Building a
good decision-making process is largely ensuring that these flaws don’t
happen.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>An interesting analogy using the legal system: originally <a href="https://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/How_CFOs_can_keep_strategic_decisions_on_track_2750">found here by
Sibony</a>.</p>
<p>Seems the answer is <strong>analysis</strong>.</p>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'What Matters More, Analysis Or Process?'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2013/08/analysis-or-process/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
You Need Some Madness ∞
2013-08-02T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/08/some-amount-of-madness/
<blockquote>
<p>I would like to leave behind me the conviction that if we maintain a certain
amount of caution and organization we deserve victory […] You cannot carry
out fundamental change without a certain amount of madness. In this case, it
comes from nonconformity, the courage to turn your back on the old formulas,
the courage to invent the future. It took the madmen of yesterday for us to be
able to act with extreme clarity today. I want to be one of those madmen.
[…] We must dare to invent the future.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Sankara">Thomas Sankara</a> <em>~ 1985</em></p>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'You Need Some Madness'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2013/08/some-amount-of-madness/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Why the Seed Funding Model is Flawed ∞
2013-08-01T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/08/stop-backing-visionaries/
<blockquote>
<p>At the core of the problem is the way investors evaluate early-stage startups.
Provided you have a talented team, your ability to raise a seed round (and the
terms) largely depends on two things: your product and “vision.” Investors
want to see what you’ve built (or will build), and hear how it capitalizes on
or causes a “massive shift” in the way the world works. However, if you
examine the births of the most successful consumer internet companies, you’ll
quickly realize that initial product and “vision” are flawed criteria.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Great read.</p>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'Why the Seed Funding Model is Flawed'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2013/08/stop-backing-visionaries/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
The Secret to Making People Want What You Got ∞
2013-07-11T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/07/making-people-want-what-you-got/
<blockquote>
<p><em><strong>How to boost desire using the psychology of scarcity</strong></em></p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Interested in boosting customer desire? A classic study reveals an interesting
quirk of human behavior that may hold a clue.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>In 1975, researchers <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/psp/32/5/906/">Worchel, Lee, and Adewole</a> wanted to know how people
would value cookies in two identical glass jars. One jar held ten cookies
while the other contained just two stragglers. Which cookies would people
value more?</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Though the cookies and jars were identical, participants valued the ones in
the near-empty jar more highly. Scarcity had somehow affected their perception
of value.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'The Secret to Making People Want What You Got'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2013/07/making-people-want-what-you-got/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
The Problem with Hardware in Africa ∞
2013-07-08T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/07/hardware-in-africa/
<blockquote>
<p>So, not only is it hard to get the parts you need, the government has set up
its regulation in a way that discourages local prototyping and even local
manufacturing. The revenue authorities would rather make quick money off of a
component import than more money later off of a manufacturing industry. I’d
rather set up an assembly factory here in Kenya than one in another country,
but that isn’t possible if component import isn’t changed.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'The Problem with Hardware in Africa'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2013/07/hardware-in-africa/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Getting A Website? Don't Ask For A Quote ∞
2013-07-06T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/07/shopping-for-a-website/
<p>I always ignore my LinkedIn’s <em>‘Top Content, Tailored For You’</em> emails but
something gripped me about that heading.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>First, it’s important to know that a website isn’t a product, it’s a service.
The woes of Web development stem from this … and the fact that it’s is a
fairly new industry with very little standards doesn’t help, either.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The guy goes on to give (in his opinion), the <em>steps for a better website
development process</em>.</p>
<p>This is where you just <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130702145911-5799319-getting-a-website-don-t-ask-for-a-quote">read the whole article</a>.</p>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'Getting A Website? Don't Ask For A Quote'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2013/07/shopping-for-a-website/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Elevators Versus Escalators ∞
2013-07-06T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/07/elevator-vs-escalator/
<p>Progressive enhancement is still important.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Christian Heilmann <a href="http://christianheilmann.com/2012/02/16/stumbling-on-the-escalator/">re-purposes a Mitch Hedberg observation</a> to relate to
progressive enhancement. Basically, when an elevator fails, it’s useless. When
an escalator fails, it becomes stairs.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>We should be building escalators, not elevators.</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Emphasis, mine. I’m not saying that this is an undeniable truth but it is
certainly food for thought.</p>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'Elevators Versus Escalators'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2013/07/elevator-vs-escalator/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Don't Compare Your Place In Life To Others ∞
2013-07-06T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/07/dont-compare-yourself/
<blockquote>
<p>While jealously can be a motivator for some people, it’s a trait that never
leads to positive outcome. Things to try to compare yourself to:</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li>You, 3 months ago. How are you doing since then? What can you improve? What
got worse?</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li>A favorite character or religous story. How would they handle your
situation? What can you learn from them?</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'Don't Compare Your Place In Life To Others'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2013/07/dont-compare-yourself/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Designer Or Developer? ∞
2013-07-06T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/07/designer-or-developer/
<blockquote>
<p>You can be all designer, or all developer. You can be mostly designer with
some developer, or mostly developer with some designer. Hell, you can even be
the golden unicorn of Web workers everywhere if you’re half-n-half (or just
both?). Most of the best designers and developers I know are all over this
spectrum.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Designers and developers—like any other group of people—shouldn’t be
pigeonholed into separate roles. Doing so is damaging to individuals, your
company, and the entire industry. <strong>Quality products and cultures thrive on
employing people with a broad set of skills and at least one specialization.
Embrace the sliding spectrum of skills.</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>I typically think of myself as a designer, but I spend most of my time writing
code. Does that make me less of a designer? No, that makes me more
knowledgeable about the medium I work on. Any experienced worker from nearly
any industry knows how paramount that can be. Know your craft—it’s goal,
medium, impact, and end product.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>Bottom line? Get talented people together that can have fun and ship awesome
shit, and good things will follow. Don’t worry about the labels.</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'Designer Or Developer?'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2013/07/designer-or-developer/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Start Teaching ∞
2013-06-30T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/06/start-teaching/
<p>I’m seriously considering teaching. Somewhere. Anywhere.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Back in 2006 I was spending all of my time getting better at Web design —
particularly CSS. I was pretty good at coding cross-browser layouts, and I
considered myself an intermediate Web designer.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>At the same time, <a href="http://chriscoyier.net/">Chris Coyier</a> started writing <a href="http://css-tricks.com/">CSS-Tricks</a>. I
remember reading his first articles and thinking, <em>“Oh, I know that already.
What qualifies Chris to teach when he doesn’t know any more than I do?”</em></p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>I was a bit arrogant.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>But Chris kept putting out CSS tutorials, and I kept patting myself on the
back for already knowing the skills he was teaching. But then, as my friends
started asking me questions about CSS, I found myself linking to Chris’
articles, not just because they saved me the effort of having to explain
myself, but also because they were really well written.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Fast forward another year or two, and I was consulting his articles myself,
sometimes just for reference, but other times to learn new skills. While we
started at the same level, Chris had improved much more quickly than I did.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>The difference was that he was teaching</strong>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2013/06/28/how-to-launch-anything/">Read the full article</a> to find out what happened next.</p>
<hr />
<ol>
<li>Possibly related. I think - <a href="/articles/2013/06/publish-what-you-learn/">Publish What You Learn</a></li>
</ol>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'Start Teaching'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2013/06/start-teaching/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Hatching Big Ideas ∞
2013-06-30T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/06/hatching-big-ideas/
<blockquote>
<p>Any big idea is going to take a while to get there. By definition, if it’s
big, and no one has done it before, it’s not going to be 1-2-3, ‘We got it!’
There is going to be a dark period in there, because you don’t know what the
key to getting there is. You have to be willing to be in some murky territory,
and be prepared to invest, if you really want to do something different.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'Hatching Big Ideas'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2013/06/hatching-big-ideas/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Performancism ∞
2013-06-27T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/06/performancism/
<blockquote>
<p>Dr. Richard Leahy, a prominent psychologist and anxiety specialist was quoted
as saying, “The average high school kid today has the same level of anxiety as
the average psychiatric patient in the early 1950s.”</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>What I see more than anything else is an unquestioning embrace of
performanicism in all sectors of life. <strong>Performancism is the mindset that
equates our identity and value directly with our performance and
accomplishments</strong>. Performancism casts achievements not as something we do or
don’t do but as something we are (or aren’t). The colleges those teenagers
eventually attend will be more than the place where they are educated— – they
will be the labels which define their value as a human being, both in the eyes
of their peers, their parents, and themselves. The money we earn, the car we
drive, isn’t merely reflective of our occupation,; it is reflective of us,
period. How we look, how intelligent we are, and what people think of us is
more than descriptive,; it is synonymous with our worth. In the word of
performancism, success equals life, and failure is tantamount to death. This
is the reason why people would rather end their lives than confess that
they’ve lost their job, or made a bad investment.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>This is not to say that accomplishments are somehow bad, or even that they
aren’t incredibly important. It is simply to say that there is a difference
between taking pride in what we do and worshiping it. When we worship at the
altar of performance—and make no mistake, performancism is a form of worship —
we spend our lives frantically propping up our image or reputation, trying to
do it all, and do it all well, often at a cost to ourselves and those we love.
Life becomes a hamster wheel of endless earning and proving and maintenance
and management and controlling, where all we can see is our own feet.
Performancism causes us to live in a constant state of anxiety, fear, and
resentment, until we end up heavily medicated, in the hospital, or just
really, really unhappy.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'Performancism'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2013/06/performancism/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Fecundity ∞
2013-06-27T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/06/fecundity/
<blockquote>
<p>So I was interested to see in <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/12/amazon_shareholder_letter/">Amazon: We cut prices to scare ourselves into
innovation</a> how Amazon’s fecundity is no accident. Amazon uses purposeful
culture hacks to create a stunning stream of new features and prevent the
culture rot that normally infects larger successful companies.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>What culture hacks does Amazon use that you might be able to learn from?</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li><strong>Use price cuts to scare yourself into innovation</strong> - We are internally
driven to improve our services, adding benefits and features, before we have
to. We lower prices and increase value for customers before we have to. We
invent before we have to. These investments are motivated by customer focus
rather than by reaction to competition.</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li><strong>Just-in-time improvements are too clever by half</strong> - It’s risky in a fast-
moving world to think you can manage innovation. Go full out. Make your
customers happy rather than play to your competition.</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li><strong>Get your customers to say wow</strong> - AWS has cut prices 27 times since 2006
and developed 159 new features and services in 2012. This helps develop long
term customer loyalty.</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li><strong>Grow rapidly at the expense of short-term profits</strong> - Amazon has invested
in Prime, Kindle, AWS, and digital media all as a way to get ahead of
competition and make customers happy.</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<hr />
<ol>
<li><a href="http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fecundity">Fecundity</a>: (1) the quality of being fecund; capacity, especially in
female animals, of producing young in great numbers. (2) fruitfulness or
fertility, as of the earth. (3) the capacity of abundant production:
fecundity of imagination.</li>
</ol>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'Fecundity'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2013/06/fecundity/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Publish What You Learn ∞
2013-06-26T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/06/publish-what-you-learn/
<blockquote>
<p><strong>Publish what you learn and don’t be afraid to make mistakes</strong>. Publish to
your personal blog and keep your posts updated. Be sure to speak with your own
voice! Remember that it is okay to not be an absolute authority on a subject to
author a post! Always ask questions and prompt conversations. There is seldom a
wrong question or a wrong answer.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Teaching is a great learning tool as well. So, even if you are getting
started in an area, you’re helping yourself by writing about it as well.
You can always consider asking a mentor or friend for a technical review.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'Publish What You Learn'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2013/06/publish-what-you-learn/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
'Likes' are a Flawed Currency ∞
2013-05-28T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/05/likes-are-a-flawed-currency/
<blockquote>
<p>The ‘Like’ as a concept is largely worthless. A ‘Like’ has no value, no cost
for doling out. ‘Liking’ your content costs me nothing, so what’s to stop me
from ‘Liking’ everything I see without considering how it affects the
popularity of that content?</p>
</blockquote>
<h5 id="recommendations-and-favourites">Recommendations and Favourites</h5>
<p>Favourites are your personal way of saving the what you love to a place where
you can easily find them again.</p>
<p>A recommendation differs in that it doesn’t necessarily have to be a what that
you love, but more so a photograph which you believe is technically good and
should be seen by other people.</p>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to ''Likes' are a Flawed Currency'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2013/05/likes-are-a-flawed-currency/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Give Yourself Permission To Experiment With Non-Scalable Changes ∞
2013-05-28T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/05/experiment-with-nonscalable-changes/
<blockquote>
<p>If you are stuck drowning in too much data and too many options and are
dazzled by all the possibilities of code, here’s a helpful bit of advice from
Airbnb’s rags to riches origin story: it’s okay to do things that don’t scale.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>A corollary is the idea of paying attention to and learning from what your
users are actually doing and let that lead you without out that annoying voice
in your head second guessing you, yelling but that will never scale! Worry
about building something good, then worry about making it scale.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>In Airbnb’s case they noticed people weren’t booking rooms because the
pictures sucked. So they flew to New York and shot some beautiful images. This
is a very non-scalable and non-technical solution. Yet it was the turning
point for Airbnb and sparked their climb out of the “trough of sorrow.”
Previously they had been limited by the Silicon Valley idea that every feature
had to be scalable. <strong>Not every solution can be found behind a computer
screen.</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<hr />
<ol>
<li><a href="http://firstround.com/article/How-design-thinking-transformed-Airbnb-from-failing-startup-to-billion-dollar-business#">How design thinking transformed Airbnb from a failing startup to a billion dollar business</a></li>
<li><a href="http://youtu.be/RUEjYswwWPY">VIDEO: How design thinking transformed Airbnb from failing startup to billion-d…</a></li>
</ol>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'Give Yourself Permission To Experiment With Non-Scalable Changes'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2013/05/experiment-with-nonscalable-changes/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Bingeing On Internet Media ∞
2013-05-24T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/05/bingeing-on-internet-media/
<blockquote>
<p>The scariest part of this new binge culture is that hours spent bingeing don’t
seem to displace other media consumption hours; we’re just adding them to our
weekly totals. Lump in hours on Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, and maybe even the
occasional non-torrented big-screen feature film and you’re looking at a huge
number of hours per person.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>[…]</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>All instead of <strong>reading, or writing, or working, or spending real time with
people I love</strong>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'Bingeing On Internet Media'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2013/05/bingeing-on-internet-media/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Three Specialists Needed For The Success Of Any Revolution ∞
2013-05-18T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/05/three-specialists-needed-please/
<blockquote>
<p>The rarest of these specialists, he says, is an authentic genius – a person
capable of having seemingly good ideas not in general circulation. “A genius
working alone,” he says, “is invariably ignored as a lunatic.”</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>The second sort of specialist is a lot easier to find: a highly intelligent
citizen in good standing in his or her community, who understands and admires
the fresh ideas of the genius, and who testifies that the genius is far from
mad. “A person like this working alone,” says Slazinger, “can only yearn loud
for changes, but fail to say what their shapes should be.”</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>The third sort of specialist is a person who can explain everything, no matter
how complicated, to the satisfaction of most people, no matter how stupid or
pigheaded they may be. “He will say almost anything in order to be interesting
and exciting,” says Slazinger. “Working alone, depending solely on his own
shallow ideas, he would be regarded as being as full of shit as a Christmas
turkey.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'Three Specialists Needed For The Success Of Any Revolution'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2013/05/three-specialists-needed-please/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Nothing Is Original, Everything Is A Remix ∞
2013-05-18T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/05/nothing-is-original/
<h4 id="copy-transform-combine">COPY. TRANSFORM. COMBINE.</h4>
<blockquote>
<p>The act of creation is surrounded by a fog of myths. Myths that creativity
comes via inspiration … that original creations break the mould … that
they are the products of geniuses … and appears quickly as electricity can
heat a filament <em>but</em> creativity isn’t magic.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>It happens by applying ordinary tools of thought to existing materials. And
the soil from which we grow our creations is something we scorn and
misunderstand even when it gives us so much, and that’s … copying.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Put simply, copying is how we learn we can’t introduce anything new until we
are fluent in the language of our domain. And we do that through emulation.
For instance all artists spend their formative years producing derivative
work.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><img src="/files/content/article/2013/05/good-vs-bad-theft.jpeg" alt="poster" /></p>
<blockquote>
<p>I <em>invented nothing new</em>.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>I simply assembled the discoveries of other men behind whom were centuries
of work. Had I worked fifty or ten or even five years before, I would have
failed.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>So it is with every new thing. Progress happens when all the factors that
make for it are ready and then it is inevitable.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>To teach that a comparatively few men are responsible for the greatest
forward steps of manking is the worst sort of nonsense.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><em>~ HENRY FORD</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="http://vimeo.com/kirbyferguson/videos">Kirby Ferguson’s</a> series on Vimeo.</p>
<ol>
<li><a href="http://vimeo.com/14912890">The Song Remains The Same</a></li>
<li><a href="http://vimeo.com/19447662">Remix Inc.</a></li>
<li><a href="http://vimeo.com/25380454">The Elements Of Creativity</a></li>
<li><a href="http://vimeo.com/36881035">System Failure</a></li>
</ol>
<p>Just, <em><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zd-dqUuvLk4">EMBRACE THE REMIX</a></em></p>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'Nothing Is Original, Everything Is A Remix'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2013/05/nothing-is-original/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Time As A Resource ∞
2013-05-13T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/05/resource-of-time/
<p><em>“Time is highly limited, uniquely limited, and equitably limited.”</em></p>
<blockquote>
<h4 id="highly-limited">Highly limited:</h4>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Each person only has 24 hours a day and no more. In total, we have about
70-80 years worth of time granted to us. We use about a third of that for
sleep, and necessarily almost another third for life-maintenance activities.
We spend the first couple decades in various stages of physical and emotional
immaturity, and the last couple decades in similarly declining health.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<h4 id="uniquely-limited">Uniquely limited:</h4>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Unlike many other resources, time is neither bankable, transferable, nor
recoverable once spent (i.e. in contrast to resources like money, fuel, or
other commodities). It is constantly being expended, whether consciously or
not, making time management an activity you must (or can) constantly engage
in.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<h4 id="equitably-limited">Equitably limited:</h4>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>The average American human life expectancy is about 77 years, with a standard
deviation of about 16 years. This is a fairly equitable distribution of this
resource for most people, compared to natural resource distribution amongst
countries or levels of wealth between families, where both can often differ by
many orders of magnitude.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>[…]</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>What this means is that along with other resources, time is also always
expended in the performance of any activity, that strategies which save or
compress the amount of time needed to perform an activity (e.g. speed) are
especially valuable, that few people are born with significant advantages in
this resource compared another, and that tradeoffs involving the exchange of
most commodity resources (e.g. money) for time are almost always a good idea.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Guard your time jealously, and spend it carefully on the most important
things. Likewise, it’s crucial to figure out as early as possible what you
consider the most important things to you in life, because if you greatly mis-
prioritize, you may grieve later on for your lost time and life. No pressure.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'Time As A Resource'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2013/05/resource-of-time/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
The Startup Story I Want To Hear ∞
2013-05-13T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/05/my-kind-of-startup-story/
<blockquote>
<p>I want a story about a person that struggled for many years. That made lots of
mistakes. That learned lessons the hard way. That eventually combined the
right idea with the right execution in the right market to make a living. Not
buy a boat you can land a helicopter on. Not conquer the world with iPads.
Just make a living. The real startup story that most people live.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>In the startup community, we keep emphasizing the dramatic, the kids out of
college cashing in on a billion-dollar IPO. But hell, that’s not the story
that any of us who are actually doing the work are actually living. We need
more realistic success stories if we truly want to help each other out.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Tell me more of those stories. <em>Please</em>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'The Startup Story I Want To Hear'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2013/05/my-kind-of-startup-story/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
This Is Water ∞
2013-05-11T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/05/this-is-water/
<blockquote>
<p>There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older
fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s
the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one
of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Is_Water">From Wikipedia</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about
Living a Compassionate Life</strong> is an essay by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Foster_Wallace">David Foster Wallace</a>, first
published in book form by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little,_Brown_and_Company">Little, Brown and Company</a> in 2009. The text
originates from a commencement speech given by Wallace at Kenyon College on
May 21, 2005. Before Little, Brown’s publication, a transcript of the speech
circulated around the Internet. The essay was also published in The Best
American Nonrequired Reading 2006.[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Is_Water#cite_note-Bissell-1">1</a>]</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>This essay covers subjects including “the difficulty of empathy,” “the
importance of being well adjusted,” and “the essential lonesomeness of adult
life.”[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Is_Water#cite_note-Bissell-1">1</a>] Additionally, Wallace’s speech suggests that the overall
purpose of higher education is to be able to consciously choose how to
perceive others, think about meaning, and act appropriately in everyday life.
He argues that the true freedom acquired through education is the ability to
be adjusted, conscious, and sympathetic.[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Is_Water#cite_note-2">2</a>]</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Read the <a href="/files/content/article/2013/05/transcript_2005_kenyon_commencement_address.pdf">entire transcript of David Wallace’s Kenyon commencement address
here</a>.</p>
<p>
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</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Henry Ford's Experiment to Build a Better Worker ∞
2013-05-11T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/05/henry-fords-experiment/
<blockquote>
<p>Lee put out a booklet called Helpful Hints and Advice to Employees, which
opened by declaring a “sole and simple” purpose that was far from simple. It
was “to better the financial and moral standing of each employee and those of
his household; to instill men with courage and a desire for health, happiness,
and prosperity. To give father and mother sufficient for present and future;
to provide for families in sickness, in health and in old age and to take away
fear and worry. To make a well rounded life and not a mere struggle for
existence to men and their families, and to implant in the heart of every
individual the wholesome desire to Help the Other Fellow, whenever he comes
across your path, to the extent of your ability.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'Henry Ford's Experiment to Build a Better Worker'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2013/05/henry-fords-experiment/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Schools Kill Creativity ∞
2013-05-05T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/05/schools-kill-creativity/
<p>By <a href="http://www.ted.com/speakers/sir_ken_robinson.html">Sir Ken Robinson</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>… kids will take a chance. If they don’t know, they’ll have a go. Am I
right? They’re not frightened of being wrong. I don’t mean to say that being
wrong is the same thing as being creative. What we do know, is that if you’re
not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.</p>
<p>~ <a href="http://youtu.be/iG9CE55wbtY?t=5m35s">5:35</a></p>
</blockquote>
<div class="flex-video widescreen">
<iframe width="510" height="287" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/iG9CE55wbtY?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&autohide=1" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</div>
<p>Hilarious. Worth. Every. 20:04 of it.</p>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'Schools Kill Creativity'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2013/05/schools-kill-creativity/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Steve Jobs 1994 Uncut Interview ∞
2013-04-29T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/04/steve-jobs-1994-uncut-interview/
<blockquote>
<p>I’ve actually always found something to be very true, which is, most people
don’t get those experiences cause they never ask. I’ve never found anybody
that didn’t want to help me if I asked them for help. I always call them up.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>… I called up Bill Hewlett when I was twelve years old and he lived in Palo
Alto, his number was still on the phone book and he answered the phone himself
and said,</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><em>“Yes”</em></p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><em>“Hi, I’m Steve Jobs I’m twelve years old, I’m a student in high school and I
wanna build a frequency counter and I was wondering if you had any spare parts
that I could have?”</em></p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>And he laughed and he gave me the spare parts to build this frequency counter
and he gave me a job that summer at Hewlett Packard, working on the assembly
line and putting nuts and bolts together on frequency counters. He got me a
job at the place that built them and I was in heaven.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>And … I’ve never found anyone who said no or hang up the phone when I
called. I just asked. And when people ask me I try to be as responsive and pay
that that debt of gratitude back. Most people never pick up the phone and
call, most people never ask and that’s what separates sometimes the people
that do things from the people that just dream about them … you gotta, you
gotta act and you gotta be willing to fail, you gotta be willing to crash and
burn. With people on the phone … with starting a company with whatever, if
you are afraid of failing you won’t get very far.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Conducted by the <a href="http://www.siliconvalleyhistorical.org/">Santa Clara Valley Historical Association</a>. Steve Jobs
gives advice to potential entrepreneurs and discusses risk, failure, his own
experiences, and learning the value of creating your own environment.</p>
<hr />
<ol>
<li>Most of this footage has been incorporated into the film <a href="http://www.siliconvalleyhistorical.org/#!steve-jobs-visionary-entrepreneur-trailer/czyr">Steve Jobs:
Visionary Entrepreneur</a></li>
<li>Production Date: February 2013 Playing Time: 25 minutes.</li>
</ol>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'Steve Jobs 1994 Uncut Interview'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2013/04/steve-jobs-1994-uncut-interview/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
How To Make Wealth by Paul Graham ∞
2013-04-21T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/04/making-wealth/
<p>One of the most brilliant articles I have ever read by <a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/">Paul
Graham</a>. Literally, changed my life & my perceptions about
technology, renumeration, hard-work … to say the least.</p>
<p>We could also call this <em>‘18 Lessons on Wealth from Paul Graham’</em>.</p>
<p><em>Emphasis, mine.</em></p>
<h3 id="lesson-1-startups--life">Lesson #1: Startups & Life</h3>
<blockquote>
<p>Economically, you can think of a startup as a way to compress your whole
working life into a few years. Instead of working at a low intensity for forty
years, you work as hard as you possibly can for four. This pays especially
well in technology, where you earn a premium for working fast.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>…</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><em>Startups are not magic</em>. They don’t change the laws of wealth creation. They
just represent a point at the far end of the curve. There is a conservation
law at work here: if you want to make a million dollars, you have to endure a
million dollars’ worth of pain.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>…</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>If starting a startup were easy, everyone would do it.</p>
</blockquote>
<h3 id="lesson-2-how-to-summarized">Lesson #2: How To, Summarized</h3>
<blockquote>
<p>The advantage of creating wealth, as a way to get rich, is not just that it’s
more legitimate (many of the other methods are now illegal) but that it’s more
straightforward. <em>You just have to do something people want</em>.</p>
</blockquote>
<h3 id="lesson-3-wealth-is-not-money">Lesson #3: Wealth Is NOT Money</h3>
<blockquote>
<p>Wealth is the fundamental thing. Wealth is stuff we want: food, clothes,
houses, cars, gadgets, travel to interesting places, and so on. You can have
wealth without having money. If you had a magic machine that could on command
make you a car or cook you dinner or do your laundry, or do anything else you
wanted, you wouldn’t need money.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>…</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Wealth is what you want, not money. <em>But if wealth is the important thing, why
does everyone talk about making money?</em> It is a kind of shorthand: money is a
way of moving wealth, and in practice they are usually interchangeable. But
they are not the same thing, and unless you plan to get rich by
counterfeiting, talking about making money can make it harder to understand
how to make money.</p>
</blockquote>
<h3 id="lesson-4-the-pie-fallacy">Lesson #4: The Pie Fallacy</h3>
<blockquote>
<p>A surprising number of people retain from childhood the idea that there is a
fixed amount of wealth in the world. There is, in any normal family, a fixed
amount of money at any moment. But that’s not the same thing.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>…</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Suppose you own a beat-up old car. Instead of sitting on your butt next
summer, you could spend the time restoring your car to pristine condition. In
doing so you create wealth. The world is– and you specifically are– one
pristine old car the richer. And not just in some metaphorical way. If you
sell your car, you’ll get more for it.</p>
</blockquote>
<h3 id="lesson-5-what-is-a-job">Lesson #5: What Is A Job?</h3>
<blockquote>
<p>But here there is another layer that tends to obscure the underlying reality.
In a company, the work you do is averaged together with a lot of other
people’s. You may not even be aware you’re doing something people want. Your
contribution may be indirect. But the company as a whole must be giving people
something they want, or they won’t make any money. And if they are paying you
x dollars a year, then on average you must be contributing at least x dollars
a year worth of work, or the company will be spending more than it makes, and
will go out of business.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Someone graduating from college thinks, and is told, that he needs to get a
job, as if the important thing were becoming a member of an institution. <em>A
more direct way to put it would be: you need to start doing something people
want. You don’t need to join a company to do that.</em> All a company is is a
group of people working together to do something people want. <em>It’s doing
something people want that matters, not joining the group.</em></p>
</blockquote>
<h3 id="lesson-6-the-working-harder-misconception--the-value-of-work">Lesson #6: The ‘Working Harder’ Misconception & The Value of Work</h3>
<blockquote>
<p>That averaging gets to be a problem. I think the single biggest problem
afflicting large companies is the difficulty of assigning a value to each
person’s work. For the most part they punt. In a big company you get paid a
fairly predictable salary for working fairly hard. You’re expected not to be
obviously incompetent or lazy, but you’re not expected to devote your whole
life to your work.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>It turns out, though, that there are economies of scale in how much of your
life you devote to your work. In the right kind of business, someone who
really devoted himself to work could generate ten or even a hundred times as
much wealth as an average employee.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Companies are not set up to reward people who want to do this. You can’t go to
your boss and say, I’d like to start working ten times as hard, so will you
please pay me ten times as much? For one thing, the official fiction is that
you are already working as hard as you can. But a more serious problem is that
the company has no way of measuring the value of your work.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Salesmen are an exception. It’s easy to measure how much revenue they
generate, and they’re usually paid a percentage of it.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>There is one other job besides sales where big companies can hire first- rate
people: in the top management jobs. And for the same reason: their performance
can be measured. The top managers are held responsible for the performance of
the entire company. Because an ordinary employee’s performance can’t usually
be measured, he is not expected to do more than put in a solid effort. Whereas
top management, like salespeople, have to actually come up with the numbers.
The CEO of a company that tanks cannot plead that he put in a solid effort. If
the company does badly, he’s done badly.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><em>If you want to go faster, it’s a problem to have your work tangled together
with a large number of other people’s. In a large group, your performance is
not separately measurable– and the rest of the group slows you down.</em></p>
</blockquote>
<h3 id="lesson-7-measurement--leverage">Lesson #7: Measurement & Leverage</h3>
<blockquote>
<p>To get rich you need to get yourself in a situation with two things,
measurement and leverage. You need to be in a position where your performance
can be measured, or there is no way to get paid more by doing more. And you
have to have leverage, in the sense that the decisions you make have a big
effect.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>I think everyone who gets rich by their own efforts will be found to be in a
situation with measurement and leverage. Everyone I can think of does: CEOs,
movie stars, hedge fund managers, professional athletes. A good hint to the
presence of leverage is the possibility of failure. Upside must be balanced by
downside, so if there is big potential for gain there must also be a
terrifying possibility of loss. CEOs, stars, fund managers, and athletes all
live with the sword hanging over their heads; the moment they start to suck,
they’re out. If you’re in a job that feels safe, you are not going to get
rich, because if there is no danger there is almost certainly no leverage.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><em>But you don’t have to become a CEO or a movie star to be in a situation with
measurement and leverage. All you need to do is be part of a small group
working on a hard problem.</em></p>
</blockquote>
<h3 id="lesson-8-smallness--measurement">Lesson #8: Smallness = Measurement</h3>
<blockquote>
<p>If you can’t measure the value of the work done by individual employees, you
can get close. You can measure the value of the work done by small groups.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>…</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Starting or joining a startup is thus as close as most people can get to
saying to one’s boss, I want to work ten times as hard, so please pay me ten
times as much. There are two differences: you’re not saying it to your boss,
but directly to the customers (for whom your boss is only a proxy after all),
and you’re not doing it individually, but along with a small group of other
ambitious people.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>It will, ordinarily, be a group. Except in a few unusual kinds of work, like
acting or writing books, you can’t be a company of one person. <em>And the people
you work with had better be good, because it’s their work that yours is going
to be averaged with.</em></p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><em>That’s the real point of startups. Ideally, you are getting together with a
group of other people who also want to work a lot harder, and get paid a lot
more, than they would in a big company. And because startups tend to get
founded by self-selecting groups of ambitious people who already know one
another (at least by reputation), the level of measurement is more precise
than you get from smallness alone. A startup is not merely ten people, but ten
people like you.</em></p>
</blockquote>
<h3 id="lesson-9-technology--leverage">Lesson #9: Technology = Leverage</h3>
<blockquote>
<p><em>What is technology? It’s technique.</em> It’s the way we all do things. And when
you discover a new way to do things, its value is multiplied by all the people
who use it. It is the proverbial fishing rod, rather than the fish. That’s the
difference between a startup and a restaurant or a barber shop. You fry eggs
or cut hair one customer at a time. Whereas if you solve a technical problem
that a lot of people care about, you help everyone who uses your solution.
<em>That’s leverage.</em></p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><em>If you look at history, it seems that most people who got rich by creating
wealth did it by developing new technology. You just can’t fry eggs or cut
hair fast enough.</em></p>
</blockquote>
<h3 id="lesson-10-bureaucracy">Lesson #10: Bureaucracy</h3>
<blockquote>
<p>… Small companies are more at home in this world, because they don’t have
layers of bureaucracy to slow them down. Also, technical advances tend to come
from unorthodox approaches, and small companies are less constrained by
convention.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Big companies can develop technology. They just can’t do it quickly. Their
size makes them slow and prevents them from rewarding employees for the
extraordinary effort required. So in practice big companies only get to
develop technology in fields where large capital requirements prevent startups
from competing with them, like microprocessors, power plants, or passenger
aircraft. And even in those fields they depend heavily on startups for
components and ideas.</p>
</blockquote>
<h3 id="lesson-11-difficulty-as-a-guide">Lesson #11: Difficulty As A Guide</h3>
<blockquote>
<p>Use difficulty as a guide not just in selecting the overall aim of your
company, but also at decision points along the way.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>…</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>What this meant in practice was that we deliberately sought hard problems. If
there were two features we could add to our software, both equally valuable in
proportion to their difficulty, we’d always take the harder one. Not just
because it was more valuable, but because it was harder. We delighted in
forcing bigger, slower competitors to follow us over difficult ground. Like
guerillas, startups prefer the difficult terrain of the mountains, where the
troops of the central government can’t follow. I can remember times when we
were just exhausted after wrestling all day with some horrible technical
problem. And I’d be delighted, because something that was hard for us would be
impossible for our competitors.</p>
</blockquote>
<h3 id="lesson-12-patents--competition">Lesson #12: Patents & Competition</h3>
<blockquote>
<p>Here, as so often, the best defense is a good offense. If you can develop
technology that’s simply too hard for competitors to duplicate, you don’t need
to rely on other defenses. Start by picking a hard problem, and then at every
decision point, take the harder choice.</p>
</blockquote>
<h3 id="lesson-13-the-catches---of-the-startup-route">Lesson #13: The Catch(es) - of The Startup Route</h3>
<h4 id="catch-1">Catch 1</h4>
<blockquote>
<p>… you can’t choose the point on the curve that you want to inhabit. You
can’t decide, for example, that you’d like to work just two or three times as
hard, and get paid that much more. When you’re running a startup, your
competitors decide how hard you work. And they pretty much all make the same
decision: as hard as you possibly can.</p>
</blockquote>
<h4 id="catch-2">Catch 2</h4>
<blockquote>
<p>… the payoff is only on average proportionate to your productivity. There
is, as I said before, a large random multiplier in the success of any company.
So in practice the deal is not that you’re 30 times as productive and get paid
30 times as much. It is that you’re 30 times as productive, and get paid between
zero and a thousand times as much. If the mean is 30x, the median is probably
zero. Most startups tank, and not just the dogfood portals we all heard about
during the Internet Bubble. It’s common for a startup to be developing a
genuinely good product, take slightly too long to do it, run out of money, and
have to shut down.</p>
</blockquote>
<h4 id="catch-3">Catch 3</h4>
<blockquote>
<p>A startup is like a mosquito. A bear can absorb a hit and a crab is armored
against one, but a mosquito is designed for one thing: to score. No energy is
wasted on defense. The defense of mosquitos, as a species, is that there are a
lot of them, but this is little consolation to the individual mosquito.</p>
</blockquote>
<h4 id="catch-4">Catch 4</h4>
<blockquote>
<p>… companies doing acquisitions are not looking for bargains. A company big
enough to acquire startups will be big enough to be fairly conservative, and
within the company the people in charge of acquisitions will be among the more
conservative, because they are likely to be business school types who joined the
company late. They would rather overpay for a safe choice. So it is easier to
sell an established startup, even at a large premium, than an early-stage one.</p>
</blockquote>
<h3 id="lesson-14-to-sell-or-not-to-sell">Lesson #14: To Sell Or Not To Sell?</h3>
<blockquote>
<p>… it’s a good idea to get bought, if you can. Running a business is
different from growing one. It is just as well to let a big company take over
once you reach cruising altitude. It’s also financially wiser, because selling
allows you to diversify. What would you think of a financial advisor who put all
his client’s assets into one volatile stock?</p>
</blockquote>
<h3 id="lesson-15-how-to-get-bought">Lesson #15: How To Get Bought</h3>
<blockquote>
<p>Mostly by doing the same things you’d do if you didn’t intend to sell the
company. Being profitable, for example. But getting bought is also an art in
its own right, and one that we spent a lot of time trying to master.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Potential buyers will always delay if they can. The hard part about getting
bought is getting them to act. For most people, the most powerful motivator is
not the hope of gain, but the fear of loss. For potential acquirers, the most
powerful motivator is the prospect that one of their competitors will buy you.
This, as we found, causes CEOs to take red-eyes. The second biggest is the
worry that, if they don’t buy you now, you’ll continue to grow rapidly and
will cost more to acquire later, or even become a competitor.</p>
</blockquote>
<h3 id="lesson-16-get-users">Lesson #16: Get Users</h3>
<blockquote>
<p>… it all comes down to is users. You’d think that a company about to buy you
would do a lot of research and decide for themselves how valuable your
technology was. Not at all. What they go by is the number of users you have.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>In effect, acquirers assume the customers know who has the best technology.
And this is not as stupid as it sounds. Users are the only real proof that
you’ve created wealth. Wealth is what people want, and if people aren’t using
your software, maybe it’s not just because you’re bad at marketing. Maybe it’s
because you haven’t made what they want.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>…</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Number of users may not be the perfect test, but it will be very close. It’s
what acquirers care about. It’s what revenues depend on. It’s what makes
competitors unhappy. It’s what impresses reporters, and potential new users.
Certainly it’s a better test than your a priori notions of what problems are
important to solve, no matter how technically adept you are.</p>
</blockquote>
<h3 id="lesson-17-premature-optimization">Lesson #17: Premature Optimization</h3>
<blockquote>
<p>… Now we can recognize this as something hackers already know to avoid:
premature optimization. Get a version 1.0 out there as soon as you can. Until
you have some users to measure, you’re optimizing based on guesses.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><em>The ball you need to keep your eye on here is the underlying principle that
wealth is what people want.</em></p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>A restaurant can afford to serve the occasional burnt dinner. But in
technology, you cook one thing and that’s what everyone eats. So any
difference between what people want and what you deliver is multiplied. You
please or annoy customers wholesale. The closer you can get to what they want,
the more wealth you generate.</p>
</blockquote>
<h3 id="lesson-18-wealth--power-with-some-history">Lesson #18: Wealth & Power (with some history)</h3>
<blockquote>
<p>Making wealth is not the only way to get rich. For most of human history it
has not even been the most common. Until a few centuries ago, the main sources
of wealth were mines, slaves and serfs, land, and cattle, and the only ways to
acquire these rapidly were by inheritance, marriage, conquest, or
confiscation. Naturally wealth had a bad reputation.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Two things changed. The first was the rule of law. For most of the world’s
history, if you did somehow accumulate a fortune, the ruler or his henchmen
would find a way to steal it. But in medieval Europe something new happened. A
new class of merchants and manufacturers began to collect in towns. [10]
Together they were able to withstand the local feudal lord. So for the first
time in our history, the bullies stopped stealing the nerds’ lunch money. This
was naturally a great incentive, and possibly indeed the main cause of the
second big change, industrialization.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>A great deal has been written about the causes of the Industrial Revolution.
But surely a necessary, if not sufficient, condition was that people who made
fortunes be able to enjoy them in peace. One piece of evidence is what
happened to countries that tried to return to the old model, like the Soviet
Union, and to a lesser extent Britain under the labor governments of the 1960s
and early 1970s. Take away the incentive of wealth, and technical innovation
grinds to a halt.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Understanding this may help to answer an important question: why Europe grew
so powerful. Was it something about the geography of Europe? Was it that
Europeans are somehow racially superior? Was it their religion? The answer (or
at least the proximate cause) may be that the Europeans rode on the crest of a
powerful new idea: allowing those who made a lot of money to keep it.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><em>Once you’re allowed to do that, people who want to get rich can do it by
generating wealth instead of stealing it.</em></p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><em>… Don’t let a ruling class of warriors and politicians squash the
entrepreneurs. The same recipe that makes individuals rich makes countries
powerful. Let the nerds keep their lunch money, and you rule the world.</em></p>
</blockquote>
<hr />
<ol>
<li><a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html">More Essays</a> by <a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/">Paul Graham</a></li>
<li>The original excerpt was from a book he wrote called <a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/hackpaint.html">‘Hackers &
Painters’</a>, you can get if <a href="http://amzn.to/ZaSZhz">from Amazon
here</a></li>
<li>Just to be clear, I did not write this article … for your reference, I’ve
linked back severally to the original article/essay, including the header …</li>
<li>If you think this was long, wait till you see <a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html">the original</a></li>
<li>Anything in quoteblocks is the same as what is in the original article -
other than the emphasis (i.e. <em>Italics</em>)</li>
<li>You could comment on the original article
<a href="http://reddit.com/info?id=20775">reddit.com/info?id=20775</a> as per the author
suggests, but the link on reddit seems to be down.</li>
<li>I’d encourage you to still <a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html">read the original</a> or better
yet, <a href="http://amzn.to/ZaSZhz">buy the book</a>, if you can</li>
<li>Also check out the <a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html#f1n">author’s footnotes in the original
article</a> … they are worth a look</li>
</ol>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'How To Make Wealth by Paul Graham'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2013/04/making-wealth/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
The Whole World's Brilliants ∞
2013-04-05T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/04/the-worlds-brilliants/
<blockquote>
<p>In his classic Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain wrote one of his most famous
lines: “Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things can not be
acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>TED is anchored by the belief that brilliance is a public good — that
inspiration, intellectualism, passion and the wonder of discovery are gifts
that everyone should share and participate in. Just as important, however, is
its affirmation that smart is not the domain of one or two or even three
disciplines, but comes in all shapes and sizes and often from unexpected
places. The enlightened mind does not, to paraphrase Twain, vegetate in one
little field or industry of the earth all its lifetime.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>We live in a moment when the awesome power of technology and the pressure of
global competitiveness have focused our attention on the importance of hard
disciplines. Our politicians push for emphasis on math and science in
classrooms. If these improvements are essential, however, the conversation
around them risks drowning out the all-important message that the world is
beautiful because of the diversity of passion in it — that alongside engineers
we need oboe players, and that for all of our artificial intelligence, we need
choreographers who remind us how majestic human creation is all by itself.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'The Whole World's Brilliants'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2013/04/the-worlds-brilliants/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/
Cynic Kids ∞
2013-04-05T00:00:00+00:00
kingori.co:/articles/2013/04/cynic-kids/
<blockquote>
<p>In sum, today’s graduates enter a harsher landscape.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>… the group she calls Cynic Kids “don’t like the system — however, they are
wary of other alternatives as well as dismissive of their ability to actually
achieve the desired modifications. As such, the generation is very
conservative in its appetite for change. Broadly speaking, Cynic Kids
<em>distrust the link between action and result</em>.”</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>In what I think is an especially trenchant observation, Buhler suggests that
these disillusioning events have led to a different epistemological framework.
“We are deeply resistant to idealism. Rather, the Cynic Kids have embraced the
policy revolution; <em>they require hypothesis to be tested, substantiated, and
then results replicated before</em> they commit to any course of action.”</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Maybe this empirical mind-set is a sign of maturity, but Buhler acknowledges
that the “yearning for definitive ‘evidence’ … can retard action …</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>She suggests calling this state of mind the Tinder Effect, referring to the
app that lets you scroll through hundreds of potential romantic partners, but
that rarely leads to a real-life encounter.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
<a title="Permalink to 'Cynic Kids'" href="http://kingori.co/articles/2013/04/cynic-kids/" target="_blank">↩</a>
</p>
King'ori Maina
http://kingori.co/