Every week, we put together a list of our top 5 articles of the past week. Happy reading!
Cathie Wood, the Best Investor You’ve Never Heard Of Bloomberg (reading time: 6 minutes)
This is a great profile of Cathie Wood who leads ARK innovation, an active equity fund. She’s making bets on transformational technologies and notably electric vehicles. While everyone was betting against Tesla, Ms. Wood doubled down.
Investing in the Experience Economy Mercedes Bent (reading time: 6 minutes)
People are getting fed up with social media and are turning to experiences instead. There’s an important trend called the “experience economy” which capitalizes on the renewed interest of IRL. Mercedes Bent from Lightspeed Ventures catalogs some of these companies and you’d be surprised at their size & growth.
BlitzFail: How Not to Go Off the Rails David Sacks (reading time: 18 minutes)
David Sacks is a long time tech entrepreneur and investor (ex-PayPal, Yammer). He dissects the top reasons that technology startups tend to fail. Some of these include unit economics, cost of customer acquisition and retention. The one I found the most fascinating is mechanical turk; when a company compensates product gaps with human intervention. I’ve seen this often and revenue numbers often hide this kind of behavior.
How to Do Strategic Planning Like a Futurist Amy Webb, Harvard Business Review (reading time: 9 minutes)
How do you do strategic planning in an uncertain future? Amy Webb provides some great guidelines on how to tackle this challenge at the tactical, strategy and vision level.
It might go against your biological wiring, but give yourself and your team the opportunity to think about the short- and long-term simultaneously.
Montreal Startup Ecosystem Portrait Bonjour Startup Montréal (reading time: 15 minutes)
This is a great portrait of the startup ecosystem in Montreal. It shows the depth and breadth of the industry from founders, to capital and support organizations. If you’re interested about the startup space in the city, you should check it out.
