Startup Rebels

Great managers help their team achieve their dreams, not just achieve great results at work. But how are you supposed to know what your team members' dreams are, let alone help them achieve them? Shouldn't you be focused on their professional goals instead of their dreams?  Today, by popular demand, we dig into management tips and techniques from Radical Candor. If you're a people manager of any sort, tune in to learn about the most robust career conversations framework we've ever seen. You'll also hear about running effective 1-1s and staff meetings, as well as other techniques you can apply today to be a better manager.

You can't find product market fit unless you where you are and which direction you're headed in.  Most companies needlessly struggle by using one northstar metric early on, usually copied from competitors. Others struggle because they track every metric under the sun. In reality, there are three things you need to measure to find product market fit: Retention, engagement, and growth.  You can measure some of these with very few users and very little time. Others take dozens or hundreds of users and multiple weeks for meaningful measurement. In this episode we'll help you measure your progress towards product market fit with knowledge from Reforge, top tier VCs (first round capital, a16z), Rahul Vohra from Superhuman, and Sachin Rekhi from Notejoy.

 It's not just business, it's personal, and deeply personal. Despite prevailing advice about “keeping it professional”, we all know that achieving great results as a team is predicated on having great relationships within the team - great personal relationships. How do you balance your desire to have great personal relationships with delivering open and honest feedback? How do you get the best out of the people on your team without alienating them or making them defensive? Today we'll dig in to Kim Scott's Radical Candor and talk through her excellent communication framework and how you can apply it as a leader in your company. The Radical Candor chart: https://www.radicalcandor.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/2x2.png Growth trajectory and performance: https://www.radicalcandor.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/marriagegrowth.png

How do you really know what is ethical? Is there such a thing as objective ethical fact? Metaethics is a branch of philosophy that grapples with these issues. Everybody wants to believe that they are doing moral good, and that they are running their business ethically. But is there some absolute ethical truth that applies to all businesses?  In this episode, we introduce metaethics then dig into ethical anti-realism and views like nihilism, subjectivism, and non-cognitivism. Listen in so we can help you build an ethical framework that you can apply when you are making tough decisions in the course of business.

If you were looking for the ideal mentor to improve your decision making, you'd probably look for a guy who made millions as an investor, studied the topic for years among brilliant minds, and perhaps was a champion at playing some hyper complicated strategy game. Well, look no further. Today we'll be talking about Richard Zeckhauser's book, Maxims for Thinking Analytically. Professor Zeckhauser has made millions as a private equity investor, taught decision science at Harvard for decades, and is a champion bridge player. His legendary class, Analytical Frameworks for Policy Making, has been taken by generations of political and business leaders. This episode will give you the same blueprint for making better decisions that is used by Illuminati-style global elites the world over.  

Every leader knows that culture is important - it comes up all the time in management and leadership literature. But what is culture, really? Why does it matter? And how do you build a great culture in your organization? Today, we dig into Ben Horowitz' What You Do Is Who You Are. You'll hear about what Horowitz has to say about culture, and how you can directly apply that to your organization. We'll talk through some of the takeaways from the book and analyze my experience as a senior engineer at a growth stage tech company through that lens. Support the pod by getting the book through our affiliate link! https://amzn.to/3fFbKca

You cannot create a successful business without validating your ideas early and often. Most people use product tests (aka building an MVP) as their first and only means of validation. Creating an MVP is the slowest and most expensive way to validate your idea. We're going to talk about low-cost, fast, techniques you can use to validate everything from the problem you're solving, to your value prop, business model, and growth strategy. I guarantee, if you're interested in creating things that people care about, this will be one of the most valuable episodes you ever listen to. Based on Brian Balfour's Reforge, Thinking Like a UX Researcher, the Mom Test, and our years of experience working at startups at every stage of growth from pre-MVP to $1B+ unicorn.

Reaching product market fit is the first major hurdle you have to overcome if you want to start a successful business. If your product isn't flying off the shelves faster than you can handle, you're not there yet. The lean startup methodology is the most common approach people take to get there. But it's fundamentally flawed. Today, I'm going to teach you a better approach based on Reforge: A growth strategy and product program run by a bunch of VCs, entrepreneurs, and executives from various unicorn tech companies like Uber, Lyft, Instacart, etc.

On the frontier, decisions had life and death consequences. Decide wrong and you'd end up scalped and burned alive or ripped apart by a grizzly bear. With a cool head and some street smarts, you could make ten years of a regular person's salary in a single hunt. And nobody kept a cooler head than legendary frontiersman Daniel Boone. The mindset, leadership, and decision making techniques that helped him survive can help us thrive. Learn how in today's episode.

As we said in the last episode, life is a series of decisions, and the quality of your life is directly proportional to the quality of those decisions. But what we didn't say is that many of the most important decisions are made with other people, in groups. This week we'll learn additional individual decision making techniques, but also the science of group decision making, with all the perils and opportunities it entails.

Life is a series of decisions and the quality of your life is directly proportional to the quality of those decisions. Improving your decision making ability is one of the most powerful levers you can pull to improve your life. Learn how by studying the work of Annie Duke, a psychologist who took a hiatus from her PhD program to become a professional poker player. She won $4M before returning to research the science of decision making.

Overcoming anger can be transformative from a leadership, decision making, and personal standpoint. We've all known leaders who fly off the handle. Does this increase or decrease your respect for them? When you're enraged do you make better or worse decisions? Today we're going to combine practical advice from stoicism and buddhism with some modern psychology to provide an antidote for anger. This episode is loosely structured around Plutarch's essay "On the Avoidance of Anger". 

Stop forgetting crucial info and start building compound interest on your knowledge. Most people put in endless hours of work recording information that they never find or use again.  But high performers build a digital second brain that lets them magnify their creative power and knowledge. Learn how in this episode of Startup Rebels!

Do you find yourself overwhelmed? Do you constantly have an endless list of tasks taking over your life? Is your company or product being blown up by endless feature requests that seemingly pull in opposite directions? This is the podcast episode for you. Learn about the power of focus, how to say no and set boundaries, and the tough inner game of cutting out the superfluous from your life. Learn to be an essentialist with Ayon and Vince Shields.    

Any situation where two or more people are trying to accomplish something together is a leadership situation. Whether you're trying to IPO or planning a family road trip, influencing, coaching, facilitating, managing, and leading others will a defining challenge for you. Today we're talking about leadership techniques forged in the crucible of battle by the  commander of the most decorated Navy SEAL unit of the Iraq War. We're reading Jocko Willink's Leadership, Strategy, and Tactics Field Manual. His advice will surprise you. In fact, it just be the opposite of what you expect.  

Is this the last episode of Reading Rebellion or is this just the beginning?   Join us to find out what the next phase of our podcast will bring you.  

Born into a cult of spiritual courage, physical endurance, and unmatched battle skill, the Spartans would be remembered for the greatest military stand in history—300 versus gathering millions. A suicide mission that inspired resistance to the Persian Empire.   What can the Spartans teach us about fear, courage, loyalty, leadership, and human nature? Find out on this episode of Reading Rebellion feat. Vince Shields, killer jiujitsu competitor and instructor.  

How do you know that all your experience isn't simulated by scientists in a lab? That you aren't just a brain floating in a vat somewhere? What does it mean to know anything at all? Today we'll explore some key epistemological arguments related to skepticism of the external world. If you've ever heard the phrase "my truth" and cringed, then this is the episode for you.  

Today we're finishing our discussion on Bernard Crick's “In Defence of Politics”. This is the second part of conversation about this book, so we recommend going back and listening to last week's episode to get the full context of what we're talking about.   We love hearing from you! Share your thoughts about this episode with us at contact(at)rdmr.io, or @rdmr_io on Twitter.    If you want to support the pod, pick up “In Defence of Politics” from our affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3A9ApgJ

This week we discuss Bernard Crick's famous “In Defence of Politics” and use it to present a rebuttal to Bryan Caplan's critique of our political system. We cover half of the book in this episode, and we'll cover the second half of the book next week.   We love hearing from you! Share your thoughts about this episode with us at contact(at)rdmr.io, or @rdmr_io on Twitter.    If you want to support the pod, pick up “In Defence of Politics” from our affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3A9ApgJ If you like our content, you'll love Michael's newsletter Byteleg. Check it out here: https://www.byteleg.com/

"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others" - George Orwell. Tune in for our take on Orwell's satirical "Fairy Story" which follows a group of animals as they rebel against their farm's cruel master and try to establish a government based on high-minded revolutionary ideals. Orwell's allegory is a scathing critique of totalitarianism and Stalinism, and one of the great political novels of the 20th century. You can buy Animal Farm here: https://amzn.to/3NbroGS (paid link). We'd love to here from you at contact(at)rdmr.io or @rdmr_io on Twitter.  

Let's say you have two people, a janitor and a Harvard trained financial executive. Would you believe it if I told you the janitor ended up wealthier than the Ivy League financier? How could that be?   Join us on this episode of Reading Rebellion to learn how to navigate the maze of your mind and understand the psychology of money.  

What if I told you your brain is careening onto icy off-ramps of falsehood on the road to truth? And what if I gave you a map to stay on that road?   To give you guys a taste of our short podcast channel (Reading Rebellion Shorts), I'm crossposting this episode here. The regular long episode will be out tomorrow!

"Suppose that at this moment some God came to you and said: Alcibiades, will you live as you are or die in an instant if you are forbidden to make any further acquisition?—I verily believe that you would choose death." - Socrates   What happens when a power-hungry demagogue who believes in his right to rule over others meets a deep philosophical mind, bent on unwinding demagogic delusion? And what happens when we listen in and walk away questioning our own fundamental beliefs?   Find out on this episode of Reading Rebellion.  

Power-hunger, false rhetoric, and the lowest common denominator: Politics is a dirty business and nobody knows that more than Bryan Caplan. Bryan is a philosophically-minded economist and intellectual rebel trained at Princeton and Berkeley. He's a professor at George Mason University, an author of several other books, and deep thinker on many crucial issues.   Talk a walk on the dark side with us on this episode!   You can buy “How Evil are Politicians?: Essays on Demagoguery” here: https://amzn.to/3Mvhi40 (paid link). You can also find Bryan on Substack (https://betonit.substack.com/) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/bryan_caplan).

“I ask the fundamental question of rationality: Why do you believe what you believe? What do you think you know and how do you think you know it?” -Eliezere Yudkowsky   Our mental maps do not conform perfectly to the territory of reality. Sometimes, they systematically and significantly vary from the terrain of reality. But what if there was a mental martial art of rationality that could help us see the world more clearly?    

Ever wonder what makes tech giants tick? Companies like Facebook, Twitter, AirBnB, Amazon grow exponentially with small, efficient teams and low customer acquisition costs. Instagram grew to 30 million users with just 13 employees.   How can you grow your company exponentially from scratch like a tech unicorn? We'll answer all this questions and more in our deep dive on network effects, based on Andrew Chen's book The Cold Start Problem. Andrew Chen was VP of growth at Uber and is a venture capitalist at a16z.  

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds" - Teddy Roosevelt.   We'll be discussing Roosevelt's 1910 speech in the context of my first ever jiujitsu tournament, and generally, the challenge and reward of trying to do hard things.

Imagine an ultra-rational, emotionless, being who always makes judicious and perfectly calibrated decisions. Picture someone like Plato, Descartes, or maybe Spock. This is who you would want managing your investments, right? Wrong. People who suffer damage to their emotional centers lose the ability to make complex decisions in personal and professional life. How can this be? What is the relationship between reason and emotion in the human brain? This is what we'll discuss in today's episode based on Descarte's Error by Antonio Damasio, a neuroscientist at USC.  

Is maximizing pleasure and reducing pain an appropriate goal for moral living? Is it realistic to expect us to consider the greatest happiness of all people as we try to act morally in our lives? Is it better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied? In this episode we'll discuss J.S Mill's essay "utilitarianism" where he lays out and defends a moral framework dedicated to reducing suffering and maximizing human happiness.  

Imagine a society of unlimited abundance, profound science, and beautiful art. A society where everyone is thriving, beautiful, and happy. Now imagine there is a dark, twisted secret at the heart of this utopia that makes it all work. Would it still be worth it?   Today we're talking about Ursula K. LeGuin's story The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas. A thought experiment that tests the limits of utilitarianism: The moral framework that strives to maximize the happiness of the greatest number of people. This is the first in a three part series on utilitarianism. This week, we'll focus a key critique of the philosophy, next week we'll dive into J.S Mill's original essay on the topic, and the week after we'll discuss the modern Princeton utilitarian: Peter Singer.  

Did you know that the most effective means of learning often feel the least productive? That the majority of people learn in ways that promote the illusion of knowing as opposed to knowledge itself? How much of what you learned in school has really stuck with you? If you're like most people, the answer is not much. Use counter-intuitive but effective learning methods backed up by psychological research to learn more effectively and get ahead!

Over 10 million people have been displaced in Ukraine by Russian aggression. It's easy to get lost in the statistics and lose the human face of tragedy. Hannah Arendt was a German-Jewish philosopher who fled the third reich and became a refugee. She chronicled the experience of displacement in a moving essay titled "We Refugees". Today, we'll dig into her experience and try and empathize with the suffering of refugees, then and now. Donate to UNICEF to provide medical aid to the Ukraine.    

A dictatorship and a democracy go to war, tearing the world apart. Though their values are deeply opposed, most people in both camps don't want to fight, and yet they are drawn inexorably into conflict. Sound familiar? A crucial case study used by the Naval War College for analyzing a possible conflict between the U.S and China is Thucydides' Peloponnesian War. There are many parallels as well with a conflict between the U.S and Russia. One of the first histories ever written, Thucydides looks at the war between Athens and Sparta to explore what happens when a democracy and a dictatorship go to war. The parallels are deep and insights into today's circumstances are surprising.  

Why is the way you learn jiujitsu the ideal mode of learning anything? How can you improve knowledge transfer so the things you learn actually stick and translate to the real world? Why is most formal education useless and non-transferable?   These are the questions we'll explore in today's episode.

"The common defense of the family is that, amid the stress, and fickleness of life, it is peaceful, pleasant, and at one. But there is another defense of the family which is possible, and to me evident. This defense is that the family is not peaceful and not pleasant and not at one" - G.K Chesterton.   Today, we're talking about a life-changing essay by Chesterton on family, neighbors, the narrowness and largeness of our lives, the strength of regular people, and the aristocracy of weak nerves that pretends to be an aristocracy of strong muscles.

Misinformation, hate speech, platforming, de-platforming, free speech, and censorship. Almost any recent controversy you can name touches on these topics. Should we allow people to spread hate online? Should we allow tech monopolies and governments to suppress the free expression of individuals? Who should decide and on what basis? John Stuart Mill articulated one of the most powerful, deep, and comprehensive arguments for free speech in an essay called On Liberty. His world-changing argument is as relevant today as it was 163 years ago, and arguably much more so. Dig into this deep and contentious topic with us on this episode of Reading Rebellion and transform your understanding of the nature of liberty.

Join us as we discuss two short stories from one of the most influential horror writers of the 20th century. Although unheralded in his time, H. P. Lovecraft has come to be one of the most revered authors of supernatural and horror fiction, and has influenced generations of horror writers since his death in 1937. Let us know what you think at contact(at)rdmr.io, and join the waitlist at rdmr.io.

William Gibson's "Neuromancer" is a foundational piece of science fiction, and is one of the earliest works in the cyberpunk genre. Join us as we discuss the famous Huge and Nebula award winning book, and dive into themes like addiction, nihilism, and artificial intelligence. If you liked this episode, share it with a friend! You can reach us at contact(at)rdmr.io with any questions or comments, and you can sign up for our waitlist at rdmr.io.

This week, we're talking about one of the greatest pieces of Sci-Fi ever written: Frank Herbert's "Dune". Hear about the ruthless psy ops campaigns of the Bene Geserit, the role of honor and loyalty in leadership, and how bad the final season of Game of Thrones really was. Tune in to hear Ayon's triumphant return, and our first 3 person episode! Let us know what you think at contact(at)rdmr.io, and join the waitlist at rdmr.io.

This week we finish up our discussion of "The Hot Zone" by Richard Preston. Last week you heard about the harrowing origins of the Marburg Virus, Ebola Zaire, and Ebola Sudan. Tune in for a discussion of biosafety level 4 safety protocols, the ethics of using primates in medical research, and an outbreak of a deadly disease on American soil.   In the show, we talk about the structure of Ebola and various filoviruses. You can see some electron microscope images of the virus here: https://www.utmb.edu/virusimages/VI/ebola.

This week, we delve into the terrifying discovery of the Ebola virus by going through Richard Preston's "The Hot Zone". Tune in to hear about the human and scientific impacts of a series of deadly virus outbreaks in the 80s. You'll also learn how close humanity came to a catastrophic global epidemic. Warning: this episode contains some graphic descriptions of the effects of Ebola Virus Disease on the human body. If you are uncomfortable with blood and disease, you may want to skip this one. We won't tell anyone! Bonus: We figured out what ground glass is. I discuss it briefly in the intro, and you can learn more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_glass.

Are you really seeing the whole picture, or are you only perceiving the details? How can a man who is otherwise perfectly functional mistake his foot for a shoe and fail to recognize his family members in photos? Tune in to learn about the titular case study from Oliver Sacks' seminal work on neurology, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.

Dive in to the Reading Rebellion Holiday Special, second in quality only to that famed paragon of holiday cheer - the 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special. This week we look at two Christmas-related ghost stories from the UK. One by Mrs. J. H. Ridell, and one by Rosemary Timperley. Hear about the skill required to craft ghost stories, different types of reading habits, and a recommendation for the best compilation of British ghost stories!

Who was John Muir? What was his impact on conservation? What is a cañon? In this episode, we dig into 2 of John Muir's essays about the wintertime wilderness.  Listen in for examples of Muir's skilled imagery, a discussion of his impact on America and on conservation, and a secret conspiracy theory about his death.  We pulled our essays from Wilderness Essays by John Muir.

Do you ever engage compulsively in behaviors, big or small, that compromise your well-being and go against your ideals? For just about 100% of people the answer is yes. Today we'll talk about the dopamine system, the nature and origin of addiction, and tools for reestablishing a healthier equilibrium. This discussion will lay the groundwork for a major theme of our podcast on Neuromancer, an 80s cyberpunk classic.   We'll be basing this episode on Anna Lembke's book 'Dopamine Nation'. Anna is the head of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic.

In this episode we apply techniques and concepts from Will Storr's Science of Storytelling to the tale of how we started Readmore. It's an instructive deep dive into how to apply these techniques to sharpen up your own messy, real-world stories that don't neatly fit into boxes.

'A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines and covering up all the details. In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.' - George Orwell   What linguistic tricks, what intellectual sleight of hand, do manipulators use  to perpetrate their machinations upon us? And frankly, what are the methods we use to deceive ourselves? This podcast episode, and the Orwell essay on which it is based, could not be more relevant in today's short attention span, post-truth era.   This is one of those essays that can change your life. It certainly changed our lives. Listen to this episode to see the contortions and brutality of 20th century tyrants through the eyes of a true prophet of freedom.

An empty canvas titled "Take the Money and Run" was sold to a Danish art museum for $84K, a can of shit was sold to British museum for $40K, and of course, there is the Marchel Duchamp classic: The urinal on a pedestal,  titled "Fountain". Is this even art any more? How did we get here? What took us from Rembrandt to putting goldfish into blenders and calling it a day?   If you've ever been bewildered by a senior art show or a forray into a modern art museum, this is the episode for you. It's based on a Stephen Hicks essay called "Why art became ugly: From modern to postmodern art".

What makes ideas stick? Why do some ideas spread more effectively than others? How come some people effortless hold court in social situations? Storytelling.    Most books on storytelling are shallow and unhelpful. They're not based in science, lack depth, and don't help you do your tales justice. We go deeper and we also give you more practical tools. Drawing on work by Will Storr, we explain how the creation of great stories is a result of deeply understanding your psychology and that of your listener.   This is probably one of the most helpful podcasts we've recorded. Brace yourself.

One of the marks of great poetry is "strangeness": A felt shift in consciousness, a gear that turns in your head upon encountering a mind alien to your own. Another mark of great poetry is allusion. Chains of rich references between poets, either in homage or resistance, going back to the earliest days of the tradition.   Today we explore these concepts while enjoying a bunch of poems from Allen Ginsburg, E.E Cummings, Frank O'Hara, W.B Yeats, and others. We also talk about narcissism, social malcontents, psychedelics, bitterness vs. growth, Nietzsche vs. Dostoevsky, and pooping in the backyard.