Weekly Kaizen - week 16/2024

Investing:

The older I get, the more respect and awe I have to investors who have been able to beat the market consistently. The majority of us, 99%, are better of investing in index ETF and calling it a day, yet we (myself included) can’t stop trying to ‘beat the index’. Investors discipline and mental awareness are fundamental skills, which brings me to the teachings of Daniel Kahneman who recently passed away:

• Lux Capital podcast on Risk, Bias and Decision making

• Daniel’s Google Talk from his book Thinking Fast and Slow

• Podcast with Lex Fridman

• Interview with Kara Swisher

BG2 Podcast:

New podcast launched this year by Bill Gurley (former Benchmark GP) and Brad Gerstner (Altimeter CEO) on all things tech, markets, investing & capitalism. Rarely have I paused, rewinded and replayed a podcast so often. Every episode is full with insights, all are worth listening and relevant even if the 1st one’s are a couple of months old.

Recommended to watch on YouTube or Spotify as now and then they will share graphs during the episodes.

• Most recent episode (7)

• Older recommended episodes

  • EP 5 - on Stock comp (with Booking.com’s CFO)

  • EP2 - with Aaron Levie (Box CEO)

AI:

Sequoia held an annual AI event at their offices and published it on YouTube with multiple speakers:

• Keynote - The AI opportunity

• Andrew Ng - on what’s new for AI agentic workflows

  • If you’re looking for courses on AI, Andrew launched Deeplearning.AI

• Andrej Karpathy - Making AI accessible

  • Andrej’s YT channel is a must watch if you want to increase your knowledge on AI/ LLM’s inner workings.

Annual letters

Jamie Dimon’s published his annual letter, it’s a long one, as always a worthwhile read with lots nuggets and Jamie’s view on the economy, politics and AI.

If you haven’t already, Berkshire and Stripe’s annual letters:

• BRK annual letter

  • Christopher Bloomstran’s client letter for an in-depth look into Berkshire.

• Stripe's 2023 annual letter

  • John Collison’s interview with Charlie Munger shortly before his passing last year.

  • Poor Charlie’s Almanack newly released edition

History: Hannibal & Titanic

• Oversimplified’s YT series on Hannibal - Entertaining and educational

• The Rest is History Podcast. Podcast which I only stumbled upon recently, I can’t believe I didn’t know about this one earlier, hosted by Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook.

  • Titanic - 6 series podcast I ‘binged’ listened to in a single day.

Other: The Power Broker podcast - 99 Invisible

Podcast going into depth into the area of the Robert Moses and how he shaped New York. Series starts with an interview of Robert Caro, author of the Power Broker.

(Turn Every Page - Documentary of Robert Caro is a gem and highly recommend watching)