Every week, we put together a list of our top 5 articles of the past week. Happy reading!
Aligning Vectors: How To Optimize To Maximize Impact Dharmesh Shah, CTO Hubspot (reading time: 7 minutes)
Every person in your company is a vector. Your progress is determined by the sum of all vectors.
The concept of vectors of alignment has been crucial for our business. We’ve been thinking and applying this concept with multiple companies. Dharmesh from Hubspot explains how it’s helped his growing company. In my view, the notion of alignment is table stakes for any CEO.
Are we returning to the office? Or is the future remote? a16z (reading time: 10 minutes)
The venture capital firm a16z surveyed 226 CEOs in their portfolio about the future of remote work and their plans for going back to the office. This is obviously a very technology based survey but relevant nonetheless. The results are interesting and paint what the future of more traditional organizations will look like as well.
On a separate note, a16z launched their own media publication this week called Future. It serves as a means to go direct to their audience. I particularly enjoyed this article about technology from Marc Andreesen.
Netflix Playbook 2.0 2PM (reading time: 7 minutes)
As Hollywood goes on the defense, Netflix has responded with a strategy that signals the beginning of a longer-term approach to competition with Disney, Amazon, WarnerMedia, and Comcast’s NBCUniversal. It begins with DTC retail.
Netflix’s move into retail signals an evolution in their strategy that will help it compete against multiple-channel competitors like Disney. Netflix is definitely not sitting on their laurels.
Brief Summary of No Rules Rules Srinath Ramakrishnan (reading time: 25 minutes)
I read No Rules Rules over the holidays and it’s a fantastic book about Netflix’s culture. If you’re lazy, you can read this nine page PDF and you’ll have all the lessons! I find myself coming back to this summary quite often.
Category velocity Buck on Software (reading time: 8 minutes)
There’s this notion in category creation that you need to push hard and raise a ton of money to make it. This article dissects the concept of category creation in much great detail. Notably, the concept of velocity is introduced which makes a ton of sense. Some companies are looking to accelerate velocity while incumbents may want to slow it down.
