Circle of Competence Issue #63

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"This is the true war when it comes to technology: censorship versus openness, control versus creativity, and centralization versus competition. These are, of course, connected: China’s censorship is about control facilitated by centralization." - Ben Thompson

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

This week's newsletter is a bit shorter because I had quite a long week. On Wednesday, I made the decision to retire from professional baseball due to a chronic back injury that had landed me on the disabled list multiple times over the last three years of my four and a half year career. It was an incredible journey of personal development and even though the ultimate goal of making the major leagues was not attained, the journey itself became the reward. As Shane Parrish from Farnam Street would say, bad things sometimes happen to a good process. Despite doing everything I could to stay healthy, train hard, and improve my game, back problems persisted. As one of my bankers from North Carolina always says "it is what it is, but it will be what you make of it." Time to make lemons out of lemonade. I'm very much looking forward to the next chapter in my life and am excited about the possibilities and options going forward - feel free to drop me a line with any advice you might have on the transition!

WRITTEN WORD

TOP READ: China, leverage, and values (Stratechery)

Why bad things happen to good decisions (Farnam Street)

How work became the millennial religion of choice (Fast Company)

Inside Google's civil war (Fortune)

Share buybacks are positive for long term shareholder returns and not indicative of managerial short-termism (Harvard Law School Corporate Governance Forum)

Excellent overview of Apple's (and the iPhone) corporate history (Asymco)

Negative rates in Europe have become an addiction (WSJ)

SPOKEN WORD

TOP LISTEN: The case for bootstrapping with Mailchimp's Ben Chestnut (Masters of Scale)

Embedding AI in business with Azeem Azhar (The Exponential View)