Long-time readers would know that I have been deliberately reducing consumption of articles in favour of podcasts. It is a journey that I began a few years ago, and I have stuck to that path since. 2024 was no different.
The few articles that I read this year were either from newsletters I subscribe to (Generalist, Lenny, Newcomer etc), or recommended by a few trusted curators (Diff’s Long Reads, or Jan Chipchase’s newsletter for instance) or DM’d to me by people who know me well. Finally, I also end up reading those that attract a lot of attention on twitter (e.g., Founder Mode by Paul Graham). The content is overwhelmingly in the business / tech space largely, and within that the themes of Product Market Fit or PMF, and venture investing, stand out.
So, here is a list of my favourite articles of 2024. Am sure I have missed out on a lot of articles given my narrow information diet. Would love to hear from you all if you think there is an article I should read + consider including here. Happy to give it a go.
1/ Mario Gabriele – various
Mario’s Generalist (paywalled) had a lot of extremely interesting and educative articles on the venture industry. His series ‘Letters to a Young Founder / Investor’ (Vinod Khosla, Reid Hoffman, Ho Nam are the letter writers), Modern Meditations (interviews such as with Chip War author Chriss Miller – see below) and ‘Investor Guide’ (where he speaks to expert investors, and curates their recommendations, along with his observations on various venture industry topics, such as raising your first fund, building soft power) in particular had a lot of interesting reads.
Letters to a Young Founder: Vinod Khosla – The Story of a 2500x Investment.
Investor Guide series has close to ten or so articles. I really liked ‘How to Raise Your First Fund’ and ‘How VCs Build Soft Power’.
In addition I also liked his interview of Chip War author, Chris Miller, part of his Modern Meditations series.
2/ Graham Duncan – various
Graham Duncan, who is easing off from his role at Eastrock( a multi-family office that identified investors and then backed them with funds; essentially a Limited Partner) is obsessed with understanding and assessing people, especially investors. I had come across him in Tim Ferris’s ‘Tribe of Mentors’ long back, but had forgotten the piece. His profile in Colossus Review (paywalled, I think) was what brought him back into my consciousness. Duncan’s obsession with people reading and talent assessment really came through strongly in that piece.
Since then I have been on a Graham Duncan trip, reading his pieces such as
‘What is going on here, with this human?’
Where he collects all his recommendations about candidate selection based on the hundreds of interviews and assessments he has done.
Graham says there are five levels of the investing game, from apprentice to steward. He describes the various levels and gives us some glimpses of what it means to operate at each level. Utterly fascinating.
3/ Lenny Rachitsky – Time management techniques that actually work
Lenny’s substack is one of a few newsletters I subscribe to. I read almost half of his writings, typically every one of his PMF pieces, and then some. This duo of pieces was an interesting departure from his usual writings on product management and growth topics, but resonated with me given my obsessive interest in productivity pr0n.
Link to articles: Time management techniques that actually work Part 1, and Part 2.
Good collection of time management and productivity tips and hacks. The most useful of these might be calendaring instead of to-do lists, keeping a ‘waiting for’ list, scheduling deep work time, saying no more often, moving meetings to mails, and lastly, creating a limited set of items (3 typically) that you have to get done, and doing them first in the day as much as possible.
4/ Natalie Rothfels – Why no productivity hack will solve your overwhelm
In this piece, which is a response to Lenny’s above pieces on productivity / time management, and published on Lenny’s substack, the author Natalie Rothfels, an executive coach, describes how some of her clients struggled to manage time better / be more productive despite knowing all of the techniques that Lenny suggested. She suggests the framework or practice of Internal Family Systems (IFS), to overcome these conflicts. I first came across IFS Or Internal Family Systems in an article on how Clay achieved PMF, where the cofounder Kareem Amin described using the technique. IFS propounds there is a family of different selves (the perfectionist vs the pragmatist vs the slacker etc) within us who are not entirely aligned with each other. It is a technique to understand ourselves better and to drive better alignment amongst our different selves. Kinda like the movie Inside Out!
5/ Ranjan Roy – Technology and grieving
Ranjan Roy writes about the death of his young daughter Samaya due to a rare condition called FIRES. It is simultaneously the best and the most painful read I have had in a long while. I hope this helped him process the loss somewhat.
6/ Vaishnav Sunil – Liquid vs illiquid careers
Superb framing of careers as liquid vs illiquid. TL;DR = Liquid careers have high demand and ‘legibility’ that others can attest to your value or work, e.g., a McKinsey consultant, or an elite magic circle firm lawyer, while Illiquid careers are harder to parse for market value – a freelance marketing person who previously worked in an NGO in Africa and worked in a couple of startups before that in junior roles. Interesting, but unclear what his or her value and worth is.
Essentially, if you are in an illiquid career, you have potentially higher alpha than in a liquid career, but it can be hard for others to parse your value / worth, without someone burning their social capital to promote you, and / or without signals or artifacts that you can provide to sell you better (say a blog, or a github repo etc). As someone whose illiquid career became relatively more liquid thanks to a fortunate move to VC, the article struck a chord.
7/ Tanner Greer – The Silicon Valley Canon
This essay by Tanner Greer (@Scholars_Stage on twitter) contrasting the ‘book writers’ of Washington DC and their narrow erudition, with the ‘book readers’ of Silicon Valley and their broad eclectic explorations was a fun read. In particular the contrast and framing was excellent.
Bonus: The essay has a list of the Silicon Valley ‘vague tech canon’ (recommended by Patrick Collison et al). Lots of good reads there. That said, I have always felt that podcast interviews matter disproportionately in Silicon Valley / startup landscapes, as that is the lowest friction way for tech elite to broadcast their learnings / ideas.
8/ Dwarkesh Patel – Podcast progress update
This ‘progress update’ by Dwarkesh Patel detailing how he thinks / approaches his podcast was an interesting read. Dwarkesh publishes one of the most eclectic podcast series I have seen. Perhaps only Tyler Cowen comes close. Not surprising, for both are super-learners.
This passage on how he chooses guests was illuminating: “I choose guests not based on whether I want to spend two hours chatting with them, but whether I would learn a lot by spending two weeks preparing. It’s a high bar, and it’s often uncorrelated with how famous they are.” The podcast is effectively Dwarkesh’s forcing function for learning.
9/ Todd Jackson et al from First Round – Levels of PMF
Given my obsession with product market fit (PMF), I end up consuming a lot of content on that topic. This was probably the best read of all of the lot. First Round launched their framework, or rather a program, titled PMF Method, for B2B companies with a top-down motion to systematically work towards PMF. As part of the launch of the program, they published this essay which was a description of the content in the first session of the program – introducing the framework, describing the four levels of PMF, as well as related dimensions and levers.
Overall, I thought this framework and program was a very well-designed body of work. Post the launch of the PMF Method, I wrote a review of the framework where I shared my view that I thought the framework was perhaps the most important advance in PMF lore and craft since Eric Ries’ Lean Startup.
10/ James Hawkins – The Product Market Fit Game
Excellent article by Posthog cofounder James Hawkins on a step by step guide to hitting PMF. James visualises PMF akin to a game, with 5 levels and how to jump levels. More relevant for B2B / SaaS founders than B2C given James’ experience w Posthog. Minor quibbles aside, I felt this was a truly masterful resource for iterating to PMF. Every B2B / SaaS founder starting out or an aspiring B2B / SaaS founder should eyeball / read this.
11/ Jason Cohen – The Roadmap to Product Market Fit
Jason is the founder of unicorn co WP Engine. He is a prolific writer with consistently interesting posts on various aspects of building a B2B business. I really liked this post on a step by step guide to achieving PMF. There are some similarities with the previous recommendation (of James Hawkins’ PMF Game) but there is lots different and interesting here too, including a peep into how WP Engine wrestled with these steps.
12/ Rob Go – Revisiting the craft beer metaphor for the VC industry
Fun but clever post comparing VC to the evolution of the craft beer market. Loved the analogy of YC as hard seltzer and Indie VC as non-alco beer.
13/ Palash K – All risk is creative
Interesting comparison of indie film producer A24 to venture funds. Not sure if A16Z is the right comparison, but still a good, fun read.
14 / Nicola Twilley – How to Get Rich From Peeping Inside People’s Fridges
Loved this Wired magazine profile of emerging markets investor Tassos Stassopoulos whose firm Trinetra uses ethnographic research (at the core of it is peeking into people’s fridges) to determine evolving consumption trends. The article is in fact an excerpt from Nicola Twilley’s book Frostbite on the science + downstream impact of the growing cold chain industry.
15/ David Heinemeier Hansson – The reality of the Danish fairytale
Good post by tech guru David Heinemeier Hansson (@dhh) on Denmark and the integrated choices + intentional tradeoffs behind the Danish economy + society.Think of Denmark like a less populated European Japan.
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As I shared above, I am sure I have missed out on a lot of articles given my narrow information diet. Would love to hear from you all if you think there is an article I should read + consider including here. Happy to give it a go.